


It's Hard

by orphan_account



Category: Captain Underpants Series - Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017)
Genre: (Someone came up with that ship name and I love it), (good god this was just suppose to be a one shot), And honestly I'm pretty happy with this, And now we hit the upswing because oh boy that got sad, Egg Casserole, God- it's a captain underpants fic why did I have to take it so far, He's still a damn mess though, Here I am though, I cannot believe I actually wrote a fiction for Captain Underpants, No Child Left Behind and other mentions of poor education choices made by the US government, THIS WAS SUPPOSE TO BE A ONE SHOT WHY DID THIS HAPPEN, There's a part where he thinks there's a school intruder-heads up, This dumb boy makes everything harder for himself- doesn't he, but it's fine it's just fireworks I promise, some good old 90's meta observations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2018-11-13 02:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11175042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It’s hard, being the bad guy.(Or the slow destruction of a man who doesn't realize he's a superhero living in the early 2000's.)





	1. Chapter 1

       It’s hard, being the bad guy.

       He knows firsthand. He knows what it is to wake up every morning having to drag yourself to work, to scowl and scream, to make sure the right kids get the right amount of everything spanning between a free lunch to a detention, and he knows the depth between those brackets. There’s been plenty of times he’s gone outside of them, but the fact of the matter still remains that it’s more of what he does out protocol and fury than anything else that will be remembered, even with the calls home.

       Though the calls home never do much good anyway, and he knows that, but he also won’t stop calling.

       (Half the time people don’t even pick up and the other half of the time he realizes while talking to the parents that the whole idea of what it actually means to be a parent probably didn’t quite sink in for some reason and that makes him more furious than he can say. He wouldn't do any better, oh no, but he'll still judge them for their shortcomings.)

       And it’s hard.

       There are the kids with the stutters, the spasms, the strange still silence, the splitting of the numbers and the switching of the letters, the outbursts of rage and the uncontrollable despondence. It’s a small colony of shaken soldiers and space cadets and they never get enough attention he thinks, he knows, he knows because he’s called home. They’re usually the ones swept under the rug- out of sight out of mind out of hearing range when they tuck themselves into the janitors closet and bawl their eyes out and then he gets a call from Tim letting him know-

       “There’s another one. Would you mind coming down to talk to them?”

       And he has to bring the counselor along with because he was never good with tears, but he knew that going into this. It was practically in the job description. He wishes there was more he could do, if only to get the crying to stop, but he doesn’t have that kind of power, and honestly, even if he did, he’s pretty positive he’d screw it up just because he’s him.

       “Not my child,”

       He hears this so many times over the line in the late afternoon when the school is empty and his coffee has gone cold, and he can hear on the other end the oven going off, can almost smell the casserole burning alongside of the bleach they used to clean their kitchen sink.

       “How dare you assume my kid is one of ‘those’. How dare you.”

       While on the flip side there are the kids with the IEP’s and the 504’s and more diagnoses than they have letters in their name and half the time he’s not sure all of them are correct because he’s pretty positive some of those kids, just some, are just lazy. He doesn’t think that lightly, he really doesn’t, but you get to know a kid over the span of five years or so and some of them…oh boy, some of them. Some of them shouldn’t be cut the slack. Some of that slack deserves to go to the others (but the teachers are overworked and underpaid and nobody knows what’s going on anymore, and he can’t be five hundred places at once like he would need to be, like he really wants to be, like he really tries to be even as he’s burning the candle at both ends now.)

       And it’s hard.

       But you can’t judge and you can’t assume and he doesn’t have half the training that these new teachers have. They come equipped with all these college credits containing hours of psychology and sociology and what the hell does ‘stratifying’ even mean? Back in his day they just called it not being a dumbass and understanding all kids are different and why the hell is it even called ‘stratifying’ anyway just what the hell. They come with their sparkling understanding of that No Child Left Behind bullshit that swept through Congress but all it amounts to is having memorized the numeric code for procedures that were already being done except the teachers now have no knowledge of how to do them. All they know is codes and honestly whoever came up with it he just really wishes he could punch in the mouth (but he won’t because no matter what he may say out loud, he really doesn’t want to have to leave this job. He can’t lose this job. There are too many days where it’s the only thing that gets him up in the morning, and he has a feeling that some of the kids feel the same way even if they’d never admit it.)

       And it’s hard.

       And for all the training they have, it appears as though none of them know how to actually handle a kid- you know- the thing teachers are paid to do. They don’t get how to calm a kid down, or cool the jets of a fight about to happen, or get a child to breathe and refocus- refocus- refocus for those stupid fucking tests. They just keep throwing codes at them, codes upon codes for tests upon tests.

       (To be fair, he never really knew what to do with a crying kid either, and he gets that the tests dictate how much money the school will get)

       But come, on that’s a little hard to put that on not only the new meat but the old meat and he’s feeling it in his bones as he reaches the summit of a new decade and he’s pretty positive that if someone doesn’t do something about these children that are simultaneously dying from lack of stimulation and absolutely freaking the hell out he’s going to die of a stroke or a heart attack.

       (It’s a fifty-fifty between his mother and his father, a fifty-fifty that it’s the genetics that he inherited along with his broad shoulders and male pattern baldness or the simple fact he doesn’t take care of himself, which the doctor duly notes while he rattles of the numbers of his blood pressure and cholesterol. Either way, he swears to god if he sees that George and Harold have let loose another tiger, he really will kick the bucket. He will keel over and die in his office and he bets they’d just laugh.) 

       And it’s hard.

       And it wears him down knowing that no matter what he does, he's still doing a shitty job, that the same students he is trying to take care of are the same students that actively hate him. It's his fault, oh he knows, but that doesn't matter much when he can hear them actively despise him, mock him, behind his back. To be fair, he hates some of them too, but that doesn’t take the edge off. If nothing else, it makes it worse. It’s the kind of rough he wasn’t prepared to take on for a second time. Twelve years of public school is a hell in its own right, and he’s not stupid, but he thought maybe if he joined the system he could break it from the inside out, but after six years of college and hours upon hours of study all he’s learned is that if you let them know they get to you, they’ll keep getting to you. That doesn’t help much at all since he knows he’s got a face as readable as a kids book, but his roommate in his third year taught him that if all he wanted to do was cave he needed to yell instead because, "At least if you yell they’ll stop- they’re not expecting the yelling probably, they’re expecting you to cave and if you fight back they’ll realize you’re not worth it." So he yells instead, and now has to keep yelling, and keep yelling, as if the precedent he has set can never be changed, even though he's supposed to have control (It doesn't feel like he has control, because though he's wracked his brains, he doesn't know what other options he has.)

       His dad use to yell at the drop of a hat, and he hates it. He hates that he’s adopted the same tactic. Depending on the room and the reverberation of the sound he sometimes wonders if it’s him talking or if it’s his dad, and his dad was the one that died of a heart attack, and he’s reminded of that too.

       And it’s hard.

       Because he’s reminded of his dad often, in the shouting, in the mirror, in the fact that he can’t cook an egg to save his soul and in the way he balls his fists. His father was never what he would have called a bad man, but there’s just too much of him in him with nothing to soften the edges, and he wonders if all that was his mother died when- god he doesn’t remember how old he was.

       It all kinda blurs together when he tries to think about it.

       So he doesn’t try to think about it.

       (But whenever he sees Wonder Woman on the throwback channel, it just comes to him in pieces until he finally shuts the television off.)

       He’ll get up to wash his face in the sink and to look at his own face then dead in the mirror, trying to find traces of her there, but there is none and that bothers him. From his shoes to his belt to his bald head there’s too much of his dad, and that will never cease to haunt him.

       (He wonders if maybe that’s why George and Harold torment him so, because it’s not that he just acts the part of a villain, he looks the part too. He thinks about it when he leans over his desk to scream at them, when the tightness in his shoulders yank and twist, when his fists are balled atop the cracking veneer of his desk, when he’s positive there is nobody left in this world that will ever call him Benny again.) 

       And it’s hard.

       There are only a couple of people in the world that really don’t give a shit if you’re a towering, overweight, asshole of an elementary school principal. Those people are the Chinese takeout guy, the man at the drive-through window,  the pharmacist, and one singular lunch lady with eyes of robin egg blue.

       (They're so blue. They're so fucking blue and he has no idea how-)

       They make him think of warmth and the smooth still lake reflecting a perfectly cloudless summer sky. They make him think of Wonder Woman’s wide-eyed stare and the cool feeling of water from a sprinkler that surprises you on a late Thursday walk when you’re still young enough to not care about getting soaked. They make him think of the fireworks his neighbor use to get from the next state down and set off illegally for Fourth of July, and he knows now it’s just copper that makes the fireworks go blue, but the seven-year-old in him still thinks it’s the most magical colour in the world, and he finds himself just as shy as that seven-year-old, unable to say a thing, when she looks him dead in the eye.

       He’s also fairly positive she’s the only reason he even eats real food anymore because of how often he finds small plates of things on his desk or tupperware containers full of stuff he knows she slaved over, and he’s never really sure how to repay her save for making sure to wash out everything as best as he can before returning them and profusely thanking her.

       (He hasn’t gone on a date since college, and even then those never lasted long. It was always one of those things where he thought he’d find the right person eventually and now he feels so old and he feels so fat and he’s overly conscious of his baldness and the toupee was probably a bad idea but he would like it if he wasn’t put off by how much he looks like his dad and how he’s afraid he’ll end up more angry and alone as time goes on so damn it he bought the toupee-sue him.)

       And it’s hard.

       And it will get harder still, he’s sure. Were he someone who liked to bemoan his circumstances, he’d probably say that none of it was his fault, that the universe better have some mercy in store for him, that he hoped maybe he could still be the hero from his comic books- the one who was down on his luck until he found the thing that made him special, but he knows there’s nothing special about him, and he knows he’s not a hero, and he really doesn’t begrudge the universe anything, because he doubts the universe gives a shit at all. Instead, he focuses on tying his tie in the morning and pouring his cereal and checking the weather to make sure he has an umbrella if he needs it and packing the now empty, now clean, tupperware container to take back to school.

       It’ll take his mind off of the inevitable end until the stillness of the evening overtakes him, and all he will hear is his heartbeat and his breathing and will think back on the day and will once again wonder if he’s going to die of a stroke or a heart attack, taking bets against a universe who doesn’t care over the carcass of a man who was born wanting to be a hero and will probably die the villain.

       It’s hard, but he’s harder, and he’s gotten used to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Ack, I don't normally put notes at the end, so this is weird.) 
> 
> (THIS IS A REVAMPED FIRST CHAPTER, SINCE THE ORIGINAL POSTING WAS SUPPOSE TO BE A ONE SHOT)  
> (I've been meaning to go back and brush this up just because I hate- I hate- I HATE showing my hand too early. In a one shot that's fine because you only have so much space to get everything out but if this is going to be a multi chapter fic which HA, GUESS IT IS, I needed to sand some stuff down. The original is still available on tumblr here:  
> https://rabbitybabbity.tumblr.com/post/161717313201/its-hard ) 
> 
> A lot of this is based off of a discussion between Micaxiii and I about a Captain Underpants/Jekyll-Hyde AU in regards to the psychology and character history discussed. There was also a small discussion about WHERE certain parts of that psychology would come from. The part about the father being abusive party though is purely Micaxiii’s idea and it’s glorious and I can in no way take credit for that.
> 
> The link for the AU/Psychology discussion: https://rabbitkinder.tumblr.com/post/161640070595/captain-underpants-au-of-jekyll-and-hyde
> 
> The link to the discussion about lack of control leading to the desire for control: http://micaxiii.tumblr.com/post/161678020487/rabbit-kinder-micaxiii-ok-so-going-off-of
> 
> The link to Micxxiii’s comic about the abusive father: http://micaxiii.tumblr.com/post/161603364617/no-good-deed-goes-unpunished-so-heres-a-sad (I headcanon he was less abusive and more just a guy who was loud and liked corporal punishment, neither of which are, you know, good things, but not that he's 'bad', if that makes any sense. Or rather, he is bad, but not intentionally bad? Ack- I can't put it into words properly.) 
> 
> I threw in the mom dying of a stroke from my own family history and just though it would fit nicely along with all the other heart ache.


	2. Chapter 2

       He saw a man with a face similar to his on the news one late Tuesday in the middle of a grey sunset.

       The guy was in nothing but a pair of bvd’s and what looked to be a curtain rushing around downtown while a voice off screen talked about some sort of invasion of talking toilets and evil professors. It sounded like something out of those comics George and Harold would always work on when they were supposed to be paying attention in class, but when there was a clip of the guy cheering in the face of great disaster, he saw dimples- sparkles- laughs, and was overwhelmed with a feeling of deja vu that he couldn’t quite place and he couldn’t quite name.

       It was weird, a little terrifying, actually. That guy had a face so very much like his, but his face hadn’t ever moved like that, not since- he couldn't remember. A long time. College, mabe, or a little after that but a little before he went bald. Maybe it was the combination of that strangely familiar face with those strangely familiar characteristics that made him so-uncomfortable wasn’t the word for it, but he couldn’t find another term. He didn’t want to watch the news after that, even though he did, even though he was glued to the screen every night wanting more information on this nameless freak with his face.

       (He couldn’t quite explain why he was a little bit jealous.)

      And ever since he saw that guy on the news, things had changed.

       People at school were a bit too stiff, the kids a bit too well behaved, and it was kinda one of those things that just inherently put him on edge because everyone else seemed to be low-key on edge and everyone else seemed to have something teetering on the tip of their tongue but nobody ever said anything, and he always hated it when he was placed in one of these situations where he apparently is supposed to know what’s going on. He can’t read minds. He gets that it would be a perk of the job if he could, but he can’t, and he’ll never be able to, so perhaps if everyone could be forthright about what was going on for once it would make things a lot easier.

       George and Harold keep whispering in the halls and watching him out of the corner of his eye, and it makes his blood boil knowing he doesn't know why. He can't outright ask because outright asking about something like this would be more or less asking for trouble. They keep dropping small comments here or there about how he’d look better of he ditched the fake hair and smiled a little more, and the one time he tried it in the faculty bathroom he nearly went home sick because there just- there was something inherently off-putting about seeing his face do something like that. It was wholly- it wans't wrong but- it was weird that a part of him could anticipate it at all as he stood there waiting to smile, wanting to smile, clenching and unclenching his toupee in freshly washed hands and then feeling ill with something unnamed after he sees the crack of a grin reflected back at him in the grimy surface of the mirror.

       (Those damn kids keep asking him to smile and he knows they mean well but it's also creepy and he doesn't like it. They just have to let it go, okay? They have to let it go.)

       He knows there is a bit of something better way down, way deep down, but opening up is a rough bit of work.

       It’s more built for doors and clams and styrofoam take-out boxes, but as he sits there with his hands shaking around his leftovers while trying to tell Edith goodnight, he finds that people have the capacity to split their rib cages wide and pull out their heart like it was an actual thing that could be handled without sterile gloves and a medical degree, and the way she handles his stuttering and shyness just makes him want to do it all the more. He doesn’t, and he won’t, but it's the fact of knowing that he can and that he might eventually feel comfortable enough to be able to makes all the difference later that week when he picks the microwaved spaghetti and oysters and smiles.

       (And the smile felt real, unlike when he had smiled in the mirror, and the smile felt real, unlike when he had overdone it in the restaurant, and the smile felt real, and he didn’t need to check in the mirror because he knew it to be so.)

       None of this means that things are any easier. Different does not mean easy. Different means different.

       And he’s still got grey hairs showing up now and again on his upper lip, and he’s still too much of a live wire, and he’s still got the doctor in his ear telling him he really needs to watch his health. The numbers of his cholesterol and blood pressure may rattle around in his head a bit more nowadays, because he’s actually aware of the dice he’s rolling and the weight of them in his fist now, and how maybe he doesn’t actually want to think about dying.

       It’s not a thing he thinks of often, but it is one he probably thinks about more often than he should.

       Maybe that's what prompts him to actually reach out a little. When he finally replies to one of those emails his roommate from his third year in university sends him, the emails turn to calls, and they chat a bit and he finds out that, “Yeah, Joseph kicked the bucket about five years ago I think. Kidney failure. Well, that guy drank like a fish you remember and I think it only got worse after his spouse left him. Loneliness is a bitch, isn’t it?”

       And he has to agree that yes, it is a bitch, as he looks around his living room and duly notes that he never did get around to repapering the walls like he swore he would once he bought this place, and he can see where the sun has left its stains and has caused the pattern to wither and whiten like some dead thing.

       (But what’s it matter, because he’s the only one that’s ever going to see it, and he’s the only one who’s ever going to notice, and it’s not like he ever has company over, so why bother? What’s the use?)

       He’s more aware now of the passage of time. That scares him a bit.

       While he’s on the phone, before he loses his resolve, he asks,

       “Mike, do you remember when we all use to hang out at that little outdoor ice-cream place at 1 in the morning? It was you, me, Percy, and Joseph, and it was almost always on a Monday and we’d all complain come Tuesday morning but we kept doing it?”

       “Yeah?”

       “Yeah…you know,” (he has to pause, has to put his courage to the sticking place because who could believe how difficult it was to say this) “I miss that.”

       And Mike laughs, says he misses it too, “But things are so busy at work now, you know? And Percy’s on the whole other side of the country in Cali doing some big thing with trying to change the education system, and now apparently he’s got a daughter on the way. Dude, isn’t that just nuts? Isn’t that just nuts? Oh, and-do you remember how much Joseph joked that as much of a mans-man that Percy was, he’d wrap himself around a little girl’s finger so quick? Do you remember?”

       Yes, he remembers, and his old roommate laughs and kept talking about years past.

       Nobody talks about meeting up again because you can’t revive something that’s already been laid to rest.

       That doesn’t stop him from thinking about the dead every once in a while though, even if it keeps him up at night staring at the ceiling, wondering what kind of uncle Joseph would have been for Percy’s little girl if they had all remained friends, and if the drink and the depression didn’t do away with Joseph, and in that moment he’s idly grateful for the fact he never much had the patience to learn to like alcohol before his brain spirals off and starts to wonder about all the other little cliques of friends he’s seen scurry down the halls at school (and he thinks of Harold and George and he wonders if they’ll all suffer the same end and then he’s right back to worrying. It would be easier if they weren't friends- there are whole accademic years he wishes they weren't- and yet- and yet-)   

       But the dead don’t always enjoy being just an occasional thought, and the next time that Captain Briefs guy shows up on the television again, it hits him like a ton of bricks.

       The guy reminds him of his mom- kinda, in a weird way, in a way that’s probably what someone might call Freudian if that someone don’t know how to keep their mouth shut. He swears that’s the same bounce that use to be in her step though, and the same mischief that use to be in her eyes, and there’s something in the way the guy smiles that just makes the whole thing so much weirder because holy shit that’s too close to home to be comfortable, so now he’s glued to the television, watching this guy that looks vaguely like him acting so very much unlike him punching porcelain in the face and tra-la-laaing all over the damn city like the fucking clown he is.

       On the one hand, it’s just really unsettling, but on the other hand-

       On the other hand...

       He can’t help but cheer the guy on, because holy shit, yeah, that was a talking, murderous toilet that he just punched in the face, well done, and he shoves the fact that he’s a little bit jealous way down so that he doesn’t think about it, (and he’ll never admit to it. You’d have to torture him before he confessed to being jealous of a practically naked man running around beating the snot out of snot, kicking the can out of cans, and even after you pulled out the thumbscrews, he’d probably just tell you to go to hell.)

       Watching the guy on TV feels a little bit like he’s living vicariously through one of those redemption arcs he remembers in the comics he threw away when he felt too old for heroes.

       He’s projecting, he knows, onto a person that really isn’t him and who honestly is probably a guy that got kicked onto the street when Regan shut down all the mental facilities and then walked into a radioactive cesspit thus somehow receiving superpowers. He imagines though that the origin story is a bit like Spider Man and a bit like Wonder Woman and a bit like that superhero guy that George and Harold draw all the time, while at the same time refusing to even entertain the notion that it’s entirely the same person because surely it’s just coincidental, surely. 

       If it’s true though, if it’s true that he’s right and this guy has gone through hell and back and still has the courage to come out swinging, well then damn it maybe the news is right. Maybe the guy is a hero, and isn’t that so weird in this day and age, after he gave up on heroes?

       In the quiet still of his house the sound of the television echoes, so even if he’s not in the room, he can still hear the newscaster talk about all the good deeds this caped crusader has done as well as the occasional blunder. He can’t help but laugh sometimes, because the guy is clearly clueless, but something in the universe must love him because, well, he hasn’t died yet, (and every time it looks like it’s gonna be close he finds himself holding his breath and waiting. Yeah it’s a recording because he can never seem to catch these things when they actually happen, but on the night news when by now it’s old news and he already knows that everything ends well, he still finds his breath catching when he watches the poor guy get thrown into a building, but damn if he doesn’t stand up again, and damn if that doesn’t fill him with courage for tomorrow.)

       Maybe that’s what inspires him to take in the cat.

       To clarify, it’s not his cat. It never was his cat. It just sort of wound up on his property one hot evening and ended up claiming a spot under that unidentifiable bush in the corner of his yard he never seemed to be able to keep dead. Yeah, okay, maybe he decided that he could spare some tap water and a can of tuna. Maybe he shouldn’t have done that. Maybe he should have just left the thing to its own devices.

       The cat, however, kept deciding to come back.

       So naturally he ended up picking some extra stuff up at the grocery store, and okay maybe that included a little stuffed mouse with catnip inside, and okay also a little plastic ball with a bell- so what.

       Maybe he also shared some of that tuna casserole that Edith made him that he likes so much because why not, and when she asked him if he liked it, and he let slip that he shared it with the cat he now officially called ‘It’ with a capitol ‘I’, he may or may not have felt his heart flip when she cooed over the fact that yeah, actually, he kinda technically sorta maybe did own the cat.

       (It only became official later though, when he found the thing huddled in his window well. It only became official when he picked up a nice green collar at the pet store and had them engrave the name ‘It’ with his phone number on the back and then asked them as a follow-up question what litter was probably best to use to house train a cat.) 

       The kindness feels like vindication, and even if it’s hard, he’ll keep working for it.

       It’s stupid stuff, it’s small stuff, but every once in a while he’ll think of Captain BVD’s on the television and wonder again about what it must be like to be him, and if that guy kept going even if his life sucked, well then, what excuse did he have for not trying to be a better person too?

       None, that’s what.

       He still doesn’t believe the universe gives a shit, and he still doesn’t believe that things have a purpose or a reason, and he still doesn’t believe in stars aligning, but who the hell knows, because jeeze, there’s now a guy running around in his underwear fighting crime. Maybe anything can happen. Yeah, he’ll take the cat in and fine, he’ll cut the kids a bit of slack, and okay, he’ll order a piece of cake for two and not want to crawl out of his skin when his fork accidentally hits hers. It’s not between a heart attack and a stroke anymore so much as it is between the sun blowing up and his house getting crushed by a vindictive toilet, and the sudden snap between short-term thinking about life and long-term thinking about life is a bit of a head spin for him, but he’s finding maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

       When he looks at the sunrise, he now wonders if maybe he could actually say to It how beautiful he thinks it looks, because he’s starting to realize just how long it’s been since he’s said something like that out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (augh I hate giving stuff away but putting notes at the bottom feels so weird *laugh*) 
> 
> (REVAMPED SECOND CHAPTER- This whole thing was originally suppose to just be a oneshot, but enough people asked for a followup. As this has gone on for...much longer than a simple followup, I have been going back and tinkering with some of the earlier 'chapters' so that things flow better. Original document is still available on tumblr.) 
> 
> Right, okay
> 
> The idea of Krupp looking into the mirror without his toupee on and trying to smile was inspired by a cartoon from Micaxiii that was actually pulled from a work by SugarandMemories so here's a link to the comic and at the bottom of that a link to the original written work (It's KruppPants thing though, so be aware of that's not your cup of tea): http://micaxiii.tumblr.com/post/161483804427/a-krupp-and-cap-knows-theyre-the-same-person-au 
> 
> Micaxiii also gave me the horribly wonderful idea of Krupp hating Captain Underpants shows the bit of mom that Krupp kinda killed within himself to survive and I ran with it. 
> 
> The idea of him adopting a cat came from some of the original concept work of the inside of Krupp's house, but I fell in love with the notion after seeing this idea fleshed out by AngeryDJ and an Anon: http://angerydj.tumblr.com/post/161654533600/dude-like-imagine-krupp-just-wakes-uo-and-theres
> 
> Rick Sanchez in the previous chapter not only asked for a SECOND CHAPTER (as did Doobert (gosh, you both blew me away with that request)) but also said that they liked how Captain Underpants was Krupp's redemption basically, "and I sort of want him to know that. To know the universe gave him a chance," which absolutely split my heart right down the middle and I love it because it's true so I kinda started/made mention of it here. 
> 
> I'm glad you all are enjoying this so much!


	3. Chapter 3

       He hates conferences.

       He’s too old, frankly, for this kind of thing, or at least he feels too old, because when he gets the letter, he feels the tightness in his back and the early onset arthritis in his hands and the beginnings of a headache coming on and honestly, he doesn’t want to drive over four hours away across the state so as to be cooped up in a hotel and forced to learn about this damn Common Core No Child Left Behind bullshit that he doesn’t believe in, and if he so much as sees someone who was a part of that Standards and Accountability Movement he very well may go to jail for what he would do to them. As much as he hates everything about this, he hates lack of control even more, but he knows he can’t change how this is going to go down (and how this is going to go down is in flames, he can already tell. He can already recognize the fact he’s an old frame house just waiting to go up because that’s all he feels like these days, all old insulation and old beams and old dreams so ready to catch fire because just painting over the old wallpaper doesn’t make it any less flammable.)  

       He schedules a substitute to cover for him and tells Edith he’ll call when he gets back on Thursday.

       He tells her this over the phone, with It asleep on his lap and with the sun hanging low over the hills, and the shock still gets him, because he never thought he’d get this far. He’s had this number for a while now but he never thought he’d get this far. There he is though, with the cord wrapped around his finger telling her yeah, he wasn’t going to be in school in three weeks but-

       "Everything will be fine, I asked Calvin to sub for me for a reason. Honestly, he shouldn’t give you guys any trouble so don’t worry about sudden changes okay? I haven’t forgotten what Bruce put you all through,"

       And it’s so weird hearing her voice over the line considering he’s had this number for about two weeks now, but he can almost imagine her tapping something in front of her quietly because he’s learned she has this habit of tapping when she’s anxious, and he can tell she’s anxious, and it’s both terribly cute and terribly touching because he can’t remember to take care of himself half the time let alone wrap his brain around the fact that someone may want to take care of him. (She asks if he needs someone to look after It, and at first he tries to defend the position of just putting three days’ worth of cat food in the food bowl, but when he sees It scarf down a single can in about a minute flat he relents and says that maybe yeah, it would be a good idea if she could just come over and check every now and again. He’ll leave a key under the mat, and the fact that he’s telling her this over the phone makes his stomach flip twice over).

       When he’s fumbling with his keys in the parking lot that Tuesday to get up there early and Edith kisses him for the first time on the cheek, he swears all his bones turn to mush.

       It’s the only thing he can think about for the whole four hours.

       He calls her when he gets there, just to let her know he arrived and not because he wants to experience hearing her voice over the phone again.

       But somewhere in the middle of the evening when the hotel is serving dinner and everyone is gathering downstairs to partake in badly cooked chicken and an open tap he finds himself holed up in the corner of the dining area watching everyone else chat, and he feels so out of place amongst all these much younger people. Almost all of them have a full head of hair, or at least hair of some sort, somewhere, and they’ve got spotless suit jackets and ironed dresses. Even the ones that aren’t so young and flawless seem to have some old friends they can hang out with to talk shop, and they’ve all got these wide smiles while he pokes at his food which has now gone rubbery, and cold and he really doesn’t want to be here at all, but it’s not like he has a choice in the matter. It’s not like he has control over the situation, and he worries that even if he tried to take some initiative and talk to people they’d end up hating him just like almost everyone else does (because he knows it takes a very specific sort of person to put up with him, and he knows he’s a bit tough around the edges, and he knows he doesn’t exactly have the nicest sense of humor, and he knows he’ll always end up stuck in a corner by himself because he's too old and tired to change, so honestly what’s the point of trying? Worse still, there's a part of him that likes being the asshole he's always been. It's consistent. He knows what he's getting himself into, at least.) 

       He heads back to his room after that.

       His suitcase is still on the bed, still unopened, and he doesn’t feel like unpacking yet because that feels like a commitment to a process he doesn’t want to deal with, so he ducks into the bathroom to take a shower first, but it’s somewhere between taking off his shirt and shucking his shoes that he finds himself staring into the mirror and-

       Oh.

       ‘Well’, he thinks, ‘well… there’s a lot that’s unfortunate going on there.’

       And he wants to deny the fact that it’s him he’s looking at in the three-way mirror, but there’s no way he can. He takes in his bald head and his broad, heavy shoulders and those broad, heavy hands that have frozen in the middle of their attempts to loosen his tie and unbutton his shirt. He takes in the fat in his arms and how it puckers the sleeves around the elbows, and his underbelly is showing, and he can see the stretch marks, and he knows there are more just below the waist of his pants. He can tell there’s another mirror behind him, but he doesn’t want to see any more right now, so he shuts the overhead lights off and instead showers in the faint glow of the nightlight that is built in just above the wall socket (because he feels like a thin line about to snap, a thin line made of all sorts of other lines. Lines because he’s fat and lines because he’s old and lines that seem etched into his shoulders as the tension winds higher and he just doesn’t want to be anything right now, so he tries to scrub out everything, including Edith’s kiss, because he’s so worried everything is a mistake and he just doesn’t want to hold onto something that’s only going to break.)

       He fiddles with the radio on the nightstand until it plays something low, something slow. Then, he drinks all the free coffee he can stand.

       He does not sleep.

       He does not sleep, and at 8am the next morning he finds himself at the far left of the last row of seats at the back of the conference room with a weight on his eyes and a weight in his chest and a headache the size of Montana. He’s holding himself so tightly because he still feels like he’s either going to catch fire or splinter apart, and he’s not quite sure which and he doesn’t feel like doing either.  The person at the front of the room is smiling in a way that doesn't reach their eyes, and everyone else is smiling and nodding along, and he absolutely can’t stand it (and no, he’s not immune to the irony. He just thinks there’s a huge difference between children doing what they’re told and adults doing what they’re told because a kid doesn’t always know what’s good for them but an adult should have some common sense when it comes to right versus stupid, and somewhere between him thinking this and him sneering at the line, ‘Really folks, it’s as easy as-’)

 

              _*snap*_

 

       He blinks.

       It’s his room.

       The shower of his room.

       He’s not sure how he got there. 

       And he stands in the water for a while until he finally musters the energy to shut it off,

       And he stands in the bathroom long after he’s dried feeling something like dread,

       And when he walks out into his room,

       It’s chaos.

       There're papers everywhere and they’re blowing about and the fan is on and all the lights are on and his clothes are strewn around the room and that might be a game of tic-tac-toe on the ceiling and oh my god there’s a hole in the window and-

       He finds one sock,

       Then another,

       Makes sure they match,

       And puts them on.

       He finds a tie,

       Shirt,

       Pants,

       And spare toupee,

       And in the wreckage,

       Puts himself

       Piece

       By

       Piece

       Back

       Together.

       He does not focus on the shaking of his hands,

       But rather,

       His breathing,

       Because the line is becoming very thin,

       And it feels like there’s a tinderbox inside his head,

       And he

       Can’t

       Handle

       Very

       Much

       More

       Right

       Now.

       …

       So when the door bursts open and there’s a flurry of people and the papers go flying like a bunch of startled birds and they all start digging through his things and pointing to the window and pointing to the ceiling and shouting and asking him over and over, ‘Did you see what happened? Did you see where he went? Oh my god did you see-?’

       He’s done.

       He doesn’t even know what he said, he just knows it came out as a bellow that was as equally vicious as the shoe that left his hand, and now it and everyone else are out in the hallway. He doesn’t feel like he’s getting any air into his lungs so he tries to make a neatness of the mess, but his hands are shaking so much he can’t get the papers to settle and ends up stuffing them into his suitcase without so much as looking because he can’t stand to look at them- at anything. Those hands- not him, it's not his fault- those shaking hands accidentally break the dial off the radio trying to get it back to last night’s station and he ends up sitting on the edge of the bed clenching and unclenching the fistfuls of fabric around his knees (and he knows this isn’t the first time this has happened, and maybe that’s why it’s so much worse, because it hasn’t happened in a while and he was hoping maybe it was just stress, but who knows. Is early onset dementia a thing? He thinks about calling Edith just to check up on It but he’s afraid if he calls her he won’t be able to control what he does on the phone so he just holds it all in and does nothing.)

       Somewhere around 1am, he turns on the television and scrolls through the channels looking for Captain Underpants.

       To hell with the conference.

       To hell with going back downstairs. 

       (Everyone else seems to have forgotten- it's not like he can't give himself this one out.)

       When he can’t find him, it feels like a punch to the gut, because it’s been weeks and it’s like the guy just vanished and now he’s left watching the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn cracking jokes about the Iraq war and hating the fact that the guy looks like he belongs on the cover of Good Housekeeping, hating the fact that he can so easily brush everything off like a joke, hating the fact that the advertisements are all about things that supposedly make life easier but probably don’t. He can’t help but wonder if the Captain was a hero at all or just an opportunist that saw a moment to do something crazy and took it and didn’t really care about anyone else (but he doesn’t want to think about that either so he tries to pay attention to the details of a new hardboiled egg slicer and fails and instead just lets his eyes go red and dry.)

       Sometime in the pre-dawn, he falls asleep and dreams.

       He dream’s he’s in his office at his desk doing something when the door opens and he looks up to see the Captain walking in quietly, sitting down on one of the chairs across from him, and though the man isn’t talking, he isn’t breaking eye contact either.

       The silence stretches.

       Something starts bubbling up in his chest, small, but then, it becomes a roiling boil. At first he thinks he’s going to cry until he once again remembers the advice Mike gave him, and instead, starts shouting, demanding answers, demanding names, demanding the ability to understand, because there’s so much he doesn’t understand and all he wants is some conclusion in all of this because-

       “Damn it you were supposed to be the hero! You were supposed to be the good guy! Do you not realize what’s going on out there? The whole world is going to shit over things it feels like nobody fully gets and all you do is show up once to punch a few toilets in the face and then you leave!"

       He's standing then, fists pounding upon the table, but the Captain says nothing, and that only makes everything worse, so he screams louder.

       "There are questions about nuclear bombs out in Bum-Fuck Nowhere and people dying for no reason! There was a school shooting a few months ago and ten kids died! Ten kids! And where were you? Meanwhile the government is going to hell and they’re taking us and the rest of the world with them and you’re nowhere to be found, in anything, for anything! What, did you want to put on a funny little act and get some accolades? Was that it? People relied on you and you let them down! People needed you to show them that not everything in life has to be shit and you let them down!”

       And it’s somewhere in the middle of him raising his fist and the Captain closing his eye that he wakes up.  

       The drive between the hotel and home is still only four hours, but it feels much longer.     

       He gets home to find a note on the table from Edith to let him know It’s fine and that there’s a casserole in the fridge, and he feels himself sag a little more. He can’t bring himself to call her, he just can’t. He’s feeling the weight in his bones and the arthritis in his hands and the tightness in his back and he’s swimming in a headache, refusing to look into any reflective surfaces, and instead of addressing any one of those things, it’s mindless little stuff he occupies his time with until the sun is gone and he finally settles into his arm chair, absentmindedly stroking It who has curled up in his lap when he takes a deep breath and finally starts flipping through the paper’s he’s had jammed in his suitcase.

       Which is when he stumbles upon the check. 

       There are a lot of zeros on it.

       And the signature at the bottom is from the man who was giving the lecture, and the check is made out to Jerome Horwitz Elementary, and all the memo says is, ‘Good Luck.’

       On the back, in what looks like crayon, there is a note that reads, ‘Figured it was the least I could do,' underneath which there is a signature in the shape of underwear.

       And maybe hope isn’t dead yet.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *quietly clears throat*  
> Right  
> Well  
> ...This was hard. 
> 
> (I think everyone and none of you asked for this simultaneously, so here we go) 
> 
> The shooting I make reference to in Krupp's rant at the Captain is what is known as the The Red Lakes Shooting in Minnesota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lake_shootings
> 
> I don't think I need to explain the Iraq war. When I was a kid and these books were coming out, I tried to picture the adults in the series going through what the adults in my world were going through, and what the adults in my world were going through was a lot of confusion, fear, and anger. I figured that all of that, plus the unreliable nature of the narration (See: essentially George and Harold) would maybe paint them as monsters when really, they were just as panicked as everyone else. It was a lot to take in. Nobody really wanted to tell to me what was going on in the news then. I guess it's hard explaining to anyone let alone a 5th grader why people kill people. 
> 
> Also, I still hate No Child Left Behind, but I don't think I need to explain that either. However, if anyone would like clarification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act
> 
> An Anon proposed to Micaxiii the idea of the Captain and Krupp being able to talk/see each other in dreams, and of course Micaxiii did a lovely job in portraying that. I didn't want Krupp to find out he's Captain Underpants yet though so while I did not do exactly as the headcannon says, I am putting this picture here because this is super cool. Thank you Anon/Micaxiii: http://micaxiii.tumblr.com/post/161511700457/i-actually-really-like-the-idea-of-them-being-able
> 
> Also, as a side, Alienlovve crafted what is probably my favorite picture of Krupp with stretchmarks based off a comment made by Frickmyrick . It never even crossed my mind to think of it before seeing that picture so... thank you both very much: http://alienlovve.tumblr.com/post/161646681778/i-have-finals-next-week-and-i-just-finished-the


	4. Chapter 4

       He takes the check and spreads it thin, as thin as he can, across the school.

       It’s so much and so little at the same time, and it frustrates him, because if the government really cared about the future of the nation then maybe they could stop their shit for five seconds to put fuel in the buses, food in the mouths, books on the desks, bulbs in the sockets, new pipes in the walls, new balls in the gym, and good, sustainable paychecks in the mail, not to mention the substitutes, and insurances, and even more college credits, and sick time, and time off, and everything- everything else. He feels like his mother, spreading antiseptic so thin and fine because there’s only so much to go around to address the wound that is the school budget. It needs to be sutured, but almost everyone’s opting out of medical coverage because they’ve got bills to pay, and with how expensive it is to simply be living, he can’t blame anyone for wanting a raise, but the discussions in the faculty room after hours boil down to whether or not a class gets new texts or the staff gets an increase in pension and it feels like they’re just cleaning the same bandage to put over the same gash that has been spewing puss and bleeding all over, but there really are no easy answers, and his head just pounds. (He’s stayed up for weeks splicing pennies on the dollar and checking investments at the local banks and they keep telling him there will be a boom in interest rates, but they’ve been saying that for years, like some farmer staring across the dirt and predicting that soon it will rain.)

       It’s so humid, but it just won’t rain.

       And after school the window is open because the AC is broken and he’s fanning himself with the folder of the one and only Melvin Sneedly, who once again was caught wiping his snot on his shirt in the janitors closet with those wide raw eyes because he never seems to be able to get the jokes that are always at his expense. On the other end of the line, he can hear the mister and the misses trading verbal blows over who’s done what to cause exactly this and he tries to interrupt because-

       “I’m only calling to let you know.”

       But it turns into-

       “We’re not signing him up for Emotional Support Counseling. He’ll be fine, he doesn’t need it.”

       “It would still be good of you to reconsider.”

       “He’ll grow out of it. There’s still time.”

       It’s not a matter of time, but no matter what he says he cannot convince them of the fact that their son is not some starfish that can regrow limbs, he is a boy who shouldn’t need to lose any more pieces because of their refusal to protect him in the ocean in which he swims. They neglect to understand that children are meat eaters, and it doesn’t matter if they were only trying to be funny, it still hurts when their teeth sink into your flesh, and he may be decades past that elementary-school prime but he still remembers. (For the whole conversation it feels as though he’s caught in a riptide, drowning and drowning and drowing, but somewhere in the middle of it, Edith walks in with a cup of cooled coffee and a handful of crackers, and he cups the phone to ask her what she’s still doing here. Though she does not answer, though he’s past that elementary-school prime, he knows what two and two make, and he can’t help himself when the realization finally hits him that she is the most beautiful. Full stop. Nothing else. She is the most beautiful.)

       When he asks her to keep an eye on Melvin and she doesn’t ask why, he figures she already knows.

       A week later, Edith tells him that she lets the small Sneedly boy sit in the back where the cooks coddle him and let him talk on and on, and she’s been doing it since she can’t remember when. She tells him he sneaks tater-tots out of the warmer, but he’s not really sneaking because he’s received so many winks and small smiles that, really, it’s more like gently taking, though he seems to carry this perpetual fear that at any moment the unspoken permission could be revoked, so he eats in small nibbles while discussing quantum mechanics and the spinning of the planets and how the light of stars moves endlessly through space long after the source of the light is gone. She tells him, “He’s such a sweet kid, and I hate that I can’t catch it when they make fun of him. It’s probably against the law to let him back in the kitchen which is why I didn’t tell you, but now I think you’ll understand.”  (And she tells him all of this as she absentmindedly traces patterns into the ketchup that has congealed on the lid of her chicken nuggets container with the crescent shape of one half-eaten onion ring. They’re leaning on the hood of his car enjoying the breeze coming off of the river, watching the sunset settle over the city limits but he’s not even paying attention to that anymore he’s just looking at her because she really is the most beautiful. Full stop. Nothing else. She is the most beautiful.)

       He has to blink when he looks away. It feels as though he’s been staring into the sun.

       Which is why he hates he’s still afraid to tell her. He’s been going to the local doctor, doing bloodwork, checking over everything that could go wrong, because he’s still got these gaps where he cannot remember what happened, what was going on, it’s just a   _space_    always ending with him waking up a little more than confused and a little more than afraid. Dr. Anagnos assures him it’s nothing even as he’s watching the man scan and re-scan the chart on his desk, looking for answers to questions not yet fully phrased, and it ends with the suggestion of another test or another vitamin or another prescription, “So come back in at the end of this month, okay? Schedule with the nurse on your way out.” It’s aggravating and it’s terrifying because he’s now once again waiting for someone to say-

 

       ‘You’re dying.’

 

       He’s come too far for that to still be the case, so let the dying happen years from now, leagues from now, ages and eons and lifetimes from now, he has so much still left to do, and it may be small in comparison to it all, but it’s his, (and what’s his is that school he’s kept alive, and those kids he’s trying to teach, and It curled up in his lap late at night, and knowledge of the feeling of the callouses on Edith’s hands, and just let him have this, please, just let him have this.)

       The drought breaks when the news says that yes, Captain Underpants is still a hero.

       And it’s felt like forever since he’s seen the late night local reporters talk about the man in his underwear doing the deeds of the people, fighting the good fights and trying his hardest. It feels like forever since he’s had the television on in the other room while he microwaves dinner, only to come back and see the recording of the Captain tackling jewel thieves and petty vandals and accidentally getting stuck in the same tree he was trying to get a cat out of. It’s impossible not to laugh while he’s stroking It and watching the newscaster try to work out how to say that yes, there was a fat bald man in his bvd’s that got stuck in a tree for a good half hour, and yes, the fire department had to be called, and no, they’re not joking, they’re not joking at all. He notes the Captain has branched out, has noticed that it’s not just nefarious bathroom dwellers the champion is taking on now, and something in his chest swells. He doesn’t put a name to it partially out of relief and partially out of shame. Instead, he listens to the recordings of the interviews and soaks in the adoration they place on the man they call hero. (Above all else, it feels good to be proven wrong. He was so worried and so let down, and for once, it just feels good to be proven wrong.)

       And the high holds him over until he finds a copy of those cartoons George and Harold draw slapped on his desk by Ms. Ribble.

       And for a solid fifteen minutes, all he hears is her screaming about the injustice and the inhumanity and the everything else she can come up with as she stomps up and down in front of his desk, waving her arms above her head, threatening to quit, because-

       “Over at Trinity, they don’t let their students get away with this kind of stuff, and you know why? Because it’s degrading! Those kids are taught how to respect their elders!”

       Attempting to be subtle, he flips quietly back and forth between two pages of the comic and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing as he watches the ‘Wretched Wedgie Woman,’ who unsurprisingly looks like her, punish the hero for his desire to save the children, saying instead, “You already know I’ve tried to get them to stop making these.”

       “Try harder!”

       “Do you have any suggestions on how to do that?”

       “Call their parents!”

       He closes his eyes, rolling them only then so she cannot see, but can do nothing but relent. Nobody will pick up at the Hutchins house, and the Beards just say their son is a saint, and it doesn’t ever go much farther than that, (because no matter how many times he’s tried to explain that these caricatures can hurt people, they still defend the position that it’s just a joke, and can’t people take a joke? On the one hand he’d like to agree, but on the other, he thinks of how Tara must feel, and how Melvin must feel, because he remembers how he himself use to feel, and instead insists that, perhaps, if people keep getting hurt, it’s no longer about the joke but the poison behind it, and as always, it falls upon deaf ears.)

       He pulls the boys into his office and assigns them detention. They don’t even bat an eye anymore.

       And that pisses him off more than he can say, more than he can put into words. He gets it, they’re kids, little kids at that, but there’s a point in time where jokes are noxious, and pranks are dangerous, and he thinks of all the time he’s spent having to explain to the POT and the school board that yes, actually, he does need more money, because guess who just put into question the structural integrity of the west wing stairs because they decided to flood them again, and no, he doesn’t care if it’s pizza bagels or candles or what who’s sales will fill up the coffers, he just needs to get an inspector in. The school’s already hemorrhaging money, could they maybe please boil that same old bandage again, because if that’s all he’s got to use, that’s all he’s going to use. (It’s a shame though, because they are hilarious, though he’d deny it if you asked him. In another life, in another time, he wonders if they would have gotten along as neighbors, or colleagues, or distant people living on the same street. The thought crosses his head every now and again because it’s not as though he thinks they’re bad kids, not at all, he just thinks they’re way out of line and don’t know when the joke isn’t fucking funny anymore.)

       So he’s ready the next day when he walks in knowing full well what he’s going to get in return for all of this.

       There are caricatures of him in the bathroom, and up and down the halls, and whispers behind his back using words that use to make him splutter in surprise but now just make him poor another cup of coffee and grab another doughnut while he’s in the faculty room. Yeah, maybe he will take an extra five minutes to sit and sip and overthink in the silence, because while he knows he hasn’t done anything wrong, it’s still difficult to convince himself that he’s not the bad guy, that he’s not the villain, that he’s not actually actively trying to ruin anyone’s lives. What he’s doing- he thinks- what he’s doing is trying to maintain a certain sort of human decency, and that’s not a crime.

       He reminds himself that there are usually three kinds of people that remember school; those that enjoyed it, those that did not, and those that were just trying to get by. They’re split into even thirds most of the time, and outside of one occasion he can think of he’s never had much success with juggling, but he is pretty good with math, and he knows that if one third is carrying around their weight like it’s a child-sized a coffin while the other two are at least able to stand up straight, then he has every right to cradle the third that is struggling, because that third at this school totals to be over a hundred and sixty kids and there’s no guarantee that anyone else will. That’s too high a number for him to gamble. He has a right to step in when others step out of line, and he has a right to demand that respect be given, and though it baffles him that the demand is met with such resistance, he also knows there are too many houses just like the Hutchins who will never pick up the phone when he calls. (There’s too many of them to count, and he’s tried. He’s forgone the phone in favor of doorbells, and postbox deliveries, and asking other students to perhaps talk some sense into their friends, because it seems like the only people those kids listen to are other kids, and he wonders if maybe it’s because they’ve been burned before or if they’ve never learned what it is to be burned.)   

       There are mornings where he sits in the parking lot in his car, watching the sun slowly rise and reflect off the windows of the school, hating the fact that he has to go in there.

       Because he’s tired of the screaming, and he’s tired of the crying, and he’s tired of the snickering at sick jokes. He’s tired, okay? He’s had more than his fair share. He feels like his hands are tied, that his feet are in cement shoes, and he’s been thrown into the river where the children, with their tiny, tiny teeth, are eating away at him as he slowly loses oxygen. He thinks of Tara, and he thinks of Melvin, and he thinks of every other person that has come into his office wailing about things he cannot fix and cannot control, and he thinks about the comments made in places people think are out of earshot (and he thinks about the fact that he’s going to have to sweat through another day up in his office like a useless marble bust, like a figurehead, like a strawman, like the fisher king, like a waste.)

       But then he thinks of the Captain, and with that he takes heart, and with that he steps out of his car, because he’s got his own duties to perform, and though he may be a blip in the span of everything else, with his tiny dreams and his tiny wants, he’s still going to do the best he can. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to give you guys a bit of the scope, here are some references about finances in the US in regards to the average cost of putting a student through school in the year 2005 (mind you, this was shortly after a mini-recession in 2001 and shortly before the larger recession that would last from 2007-2009)
> 
> http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article1030175.html
> 
> https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa662.pdf
> 
> https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmb.asp
> 
> http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/fbs/resources/data/
> 
> http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Policies/Money-matters-At-a-glance/Money-matters-A-primer-on-K12-school-funding.html
> 
> https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa662.pdf
> 
> http://www.atlantapublicschools.us/cms/lib/GA01000924/Centricity/ModuleInstance/1089/CostPerStudent.pdf
> 
>  
> 
> Also, fun fact, in re watching the movie today (NEVER have I gone back to see a movie in theaters twice, that was always a luxury I never partook in. Since I got to go with two other people this time though, I counted it as a new experience) I realized something. I have this weird inability to mesh the drawing/writing styles of original source material with that of the fandom. 
> 
> Like- the source material is one universe and the fandom is an AU? For example, it is almost impossible for me to picture Krupp as he is drawn/animated in the books/movie living through this work of fiction. The Krupp as drawn by Micaxiii or AngeryDJ or Gubbins-Turtledove or Alienlovve or Bishopinblue and I'm writing them all out here because just... they draw him so big? So flipping big and I think it fits PERFECTLY. We also never really see in the books or movie Krupp show any sort of sadness (loneliness in the movie, yeah, but not actual sadness) and perhaps it's because they've drawn him with expressions outside of nasty glee and rage that also help but whatever I don't know. Sugarandmemories does an excellent job of showing a multitude of expression and they draw authentic noodle-armed Benny so shout out to them as well. Regardless, if you haven't checked out these artists yet please do yourself a favor and do so. They’re also super lovely, which is a gigantic bonus in and of itself.
> 
> So yes. 
> 
> I'm open for suggestions of things you guys want in the next chapter. That does not mean I will do everything that is suggested, that just means I'm open to hearing what you guys are thinking. 
> 
> (Also, the style of the chapters keeps changing subtly and I realized that? I went more purple prose-y and rhyme-y here than I did in the first by a sizable amount. Then again, that first chapter was technically written as a stand alone, then the second as a bookend, and now it's just spiraled out of control. I'll probably stick with this kind of writing from here on out but... honestly at this point, who the heck knows.)


	5. Chapter 5

       The last batch of tests come back negative and counseling is suggested.   

       He keeps his thoughts in a lockbox the entire way home, keeps his eyes narrowed and his teeth clenched. The bruises that dot his arm like shiny blue beetles, twitching because he’s white-knuckling the steering wheel and willing himself not to run the car into a telephone pole. Out of the corner of his eye, the bruises look like they’re crawling, but he pretends not to notice and instead focuses on the radio, focuses on the traffic report and the forecasts, focuses on tomorrow and what long sleeved shirt will match with what tie because no, no, no (Never in his life, not once, not ever, has any good come of him explaining himself to people that think they know him better than he knows himself. He knows himself well enough, thanks.)

       He goes into work the next day, like every other day before that, and says nothing.

       He keeps his conversations short and brief, tells the fourth graders to stop running in the school and the second graders to stop trading Livestrong bracelets, tells the secretary to hold his calls while he runs to the only copier still working in the building, tells himself to stick to the narrow halls instead of running out to his car to drive and drive and drive and drive until he breaks down or runs off the road. He’s planning every gesture and step because he can’t give away anything, and the lockbox at the back of his brain is getting heavier while his whole body is shaking because of the weight. As he closes the door to the supply room with his shoulder, he can feel something pull and he cringes. It’s a combination of the bruising and the muscle strain and that tension- that perpetual tension in his neck, across his shoulders, down his spine- but when Tara asks him how he’s doing, he smiles and says, “Fine, you?” because that is the expected answer, (and he’s gotten so used to parsing words and phrases, reciting expected answers. It’s so easy now to give what the conversation demands and sit back and listen, just as in this moment he’s sitting back and listening to her go on and on, meanwhile he’s trying not to vomit as he smiles and nods along.)

       No, he has no intentions of telling anyone.

       He has no intentions of telling anyone anything, no matter what happens, because he’s not even sure what’s happening right now. It’s late, the sun has long since set, and It has taken its place in the seat of the recliner, but Mr. Rected is on the phone because-

       “I know you called Melvin’s parents already but I’m worried about him, I really am. He’s been in my office three times this week.”

       “For what?”

       “I can’t give-”

       “I’m not asking for details Miles, I’m just asking for a general picture so I can better understand.”

       And it’s a lot about bullying and it’s a lot about jabs with high expenditures and pranks that just aren’t funny and parents that just don’t care and it’s all half-stories and partial details, and the joke is, “Well, don’t want homeland security to overhear,” but the truth is the government has already tied their hands leaving them to try to do everything without them, and he’s so beyond pissed. He just want’s this kid to be okay. He just really wants everything to turn out fine for Melvin, weasley kid though he is, and he feels like he’s at his wit's end trying to figure out how to tie all these loose ends while his hands are still tied and he’s so very far beyond pissed he really is and-

       His fist goes through the wall.

       Through the wall, to the other room.

       And his whole world seems to freeze save for Miles on the line going, “Ben? Ben you there? I heard a noise, you okay?”

       “…Yeah… Fine… Dropped the cat food bowl.”

       “You have a cat?”

       “Not the focus here, Miles.”

       After the conversation is over and the phone has been hung up, he looks at the wall, through the wall, at the wall of the other room, and feels the shiny blue beetles crawl across his skin, feels the prickling of that fine white scar tissue that has started to make a cross-stitching from his fingertips to his upper arm, feels something sinking in his chest as he wishes the floor would swallow him whole, and stuffs it all in the lockbox. (The whole time he’s at the hardware store the next day he’s afraid he’ll be found out, that someone will know, that someone will guess, and though nobody does, his skin still prickles until he finally makes it home and fixes the hole.)

       And still, he says nothing. He just takes some extra time that evening to figure out what long sleeved shirt matches with what tie because his hands are shaking a bit more than usual.

       And he never will say anything, because when Mr. Rected pulls him into his office to discuss the situation with Melvin due to the fact that-

       “It’s escalating. He hit a student with his math textbook. You realize he’s got to have detention for that.”

       The emphasis of his life isn’t him, it never was. It was always about the students, and thank god for that, because it gives him a reason to pull himself outside of his own skin and focus on others, gives him a reason to fix something that isn't himself, gives him a reason to rectify the injustice of shitty people doing shitty things just because they can, even if he is one of those shitty people doing shitty things. When Melvin’s called in and the poor kid’s wailing with the textbook held out like it’s a murder weapon, he just gets up and hugs him, because it was never about him, it was always about what needed to be done so nobody ever ended up like him.  (When Melvin wipes his snotty face all over his long sleeved shirt, all over its matching tie, he feels like peeling off his skin in pure spite of himself, feels like spitting on the tiles and saying, ‘there, take that’, because he never wanted to end up this bitter so he sure as hell isn’t going to let anyone else do so.)

       But he doesn’t say that, because you’re not supposed to say that, and he’s gotten too good at reciting expected answers to give up now, so he just fills the lockbox up a little more.

       And he vows to never let Edith know, swears he’s never got to let any of it slip to her, who’s freckles have bloomed in the sunshine rolling down from the bridge of her nose and across her shoulders like wild flowers on a mountain side, who’s wearing an orange flowered sundress he’s never seen before, who’s talking about the new desert recipes she picked up from books at the library, who’s left her gelato sitting next to him on the park bench that she has abandoned to go pet that ugly thing the jogger swears is a dog. It’s all hair and all bug eyes and all drool all over her and that orange flowered sundress he’s been trying to figure out how to compliment her on, and everyone is all smiles as she’s laughing-

       “Oh my goodness look at yoooou! Look at you! Yes, yes you are such a pretty baby! Oh my god look at this DOG, Benny!”

       (And he’s smiling even as he’s sweating bullets, even as the long sleeves of his shirt itch, even as his ice-cream cone jumps from the tremor in his hands, even as his heart’s cracking wide open because ‘Oh god she called him Benny,’ but also ‘Oh god she called him Benny,’ and in that instant he’s back to the heart attack or the stroke, and that kills him, it really does.)

       He’s still sweating bullets later that week as he sits on the stairs leading out of the gym with Mr. Meaner who’s trying to make small talk, sipping a coke from that half dead vending machine in the teacher’s lounge and waiting, waiting, waiting for-

       “Summer's almost officially over. Have any last plans?”

       “Not really. You?”

       “Aw, don’t give me that! You’re a man with a lady on your arm, and that means all sorts of fun kinds of trouble! You know, they’ve got those shindigs over and down by the river? Got music and lights and everything. You could take-“

       “Kenny-“

       And he doesn’t know what to say because he doesn’t know what to think. The thoughts crossing his mind now never did before, and he really wish they wouldn’t start, because he just counted the bruises this morning and there are twenty now where there use to be thirteen, where there use to be ten, where there use to be maybe five including a particularly wicked one right across his chest. He had stared at it in the flickering glow of the bathroom light, touched it, hissing as his fingers sunk into the back of that blue shiny beetle, feeling it squirm as he looked at all the other blue shiny beetles crawling across him, and that’s when he decided to shut the lights off and shower in the dark again. Even now though, in the blinding light of the midday sun, he’s still not ready to come out of that dark shower yet. He’s so worn out from being terrified it’s hard to feel anything else in this moment except disgusted and done, so he just says quietly-

       “-don’t.”

      And between the silence and the humidity, the air is so thick he wonders if he didn’t cut the words quite right, wonders if he can still breathe, but then-

       “I, uh, I’m taking the kids up to my aunt’s in New England. We’re doing the whole family get together at her lake house. It’ll be nice for them to finally meet their cousins.”

       He pulls his face into a smile.

       “I hope you guys have a good time.”

       Later though, later, in the still of the evening, he thinks of those summer parties the city throws down by the river. The thoughts are accompanied by visions of Edith with her freckles and her orange flowered sundress, her food puns and green, green grass, the gentle roar of water as it rushes with the water bugs skimming atop the stillness of the banks. Under a tree, away from all the lights, he wonders if he might have the nerve to return that kiss she left on his cheek on that Tuesday that feels so long ago, but he’s a coward. He’s always been a coward, and that’s not going to change. (He rolls over so that his back is to the moonlight as he slowly stuffs all the dreams into the lockbox. He doesn’t want to think about the future. He doesn’t want to think at all. He just wants to get through tomorrow, and if he can do that, he’ll count himself lucky.)

       He has another ‘episode’ the day after next. They’re so frequent he’s calling them ‘episodes now’. He’s a little more than disturbed by that.

       Because you can only take waking up out of the dark so much. You can only take the gaps of time between when you close your eyes to blink and when you open them way across town, standing on the old bridge that collapsed two years ago with your toes hanging over the edge and maybe a three-second drop to the waters below. You can only take coming to in the rain, or in some guy’s sprinkler-rigged lawn, or in a public bathroom with nothing but your underwear, particularly when he’s got nobody to call because, really, he’s got nobody to call. Who’d he ever ask to come? What would he even say?

       ‘Yeah, hi, it happened again. I’m at Tuesday Mornings on the corner of Yarrow and McGiaver. Could you come get me please?’

       But it’s not Tuesday Morning’s this time, it’s the bridge, and it’s one of those sudden summer thunderstorms. He’s watching the rain pummel the water below into a frothing frenzy while the thunder rolls above him, and it takes everything in him to step away from the edge. (He’s not done yet, he’s not anywhere near done yet. There’s still so much that needs to be done please just let him finish at least, please.)

       And the thoughts go in the lockbox, and he picks out another long sleeved shirt, and he goes to work like nothing’s happened because damn it nothing has happened yet- not yet.

       He doesn’t realize how long this has been going on until someone points to the calendar in the faculty lounge and asks the person sitting next to them what their plans are for Labor Day weekend, and it’s then that he realizes just how far into August they are, but that’s not really the thing that catches him. It’s the thing he holds on to though, as he pours the coffee grounds into the machine and sneers at an unwashed mug on the draining board, because if he doesn’t focus on something other than the fact that everyone else's lives seem so normal from where he's standing, it’s entirely possible he’s going to snap straight down the middle. He balls his shaking hands into shaking fists and presses them into the countertop, puts all his weight onto them as he leans in and pretends to be interested in the way the coffee machine hisses and splutters and drips rather than the conversation behind him, as Joseph goes on about how he and his boys are planning to go hunting and Miles says he’s taking his little girl to see something in the movies, and he has to leave because he can’t- he can’t do this. He sneaks away out into the adjacent room to flip through the mail because there is so much work still left to do, because there are so many more important things to focus on than the way he can feel that thin white scar tissue along his arms prickling, alongside the crawling of those blue shiny beetle bruises. There are interviews that need to be scheduled, wages that need to be paid, pension paperwork that needs to be filled out, tons upon tons of kids who should or should not be in honours classes who’s permission slips have yet to make it to school-

       When he comes across a folded drawing of Captain Underpants.

       Nothing else, just a crayon drawing that he knows is Harolds. He's seen enough of those comics the boy draws to know.

       And just like that, everything clicks back into place. The world stops spinning, his lungs start pumping again, things slowly slip back into focus.  

       This is why he comes every day, because it’s not about him, it never was.

       It was always about the students, and thank god for that.

       (He’s not a villain, he’s not, nor will he let himself become one, nor will he let himself be his father either, and he doesn’t want it to be a chance flip of the coin between a heart attack and a stroke, he just wants this. He just wants the chance to do right by this world and by these kids and to feel this feeling that’s blossoming in his chest that feels so, so good, that feeling that he hasn’t felt in so, so long.)

       He dreams of the Captain again.

       They’re back in his office, and he’s back behind his desk, but the feeling is different. The room is light but not hot, the door is closed but not locked. It feels like he’s being scrutinized, analyzed by a man with eyes like his own, with a face like his own, until-

       “I don’t understand.”

       And it’s his voice coming from the Captain’s mouth. It’s weird, at first, until he rationalizes that maybe it’s just because he’s never heard the guy talk before, so he just goes with it because what’s it matter? It’s a dream. It’s a weird, lucid-feeling dream, but it’s just a dream, so-

       “What don’t you understand?”

       The only reply is a gesture, and he looks down to see that his long sleeves have been rolled back, and he flinches.

       “I- I’m working that out.”

       “I’m not talking about the bruising.”  

       When he looks up this time, he gasps- he can’t help himself. Where the Captain looked pristine just moments ago, he’s now covered in those blue beetle bruises too, and they’re crawling. They’re scuttling across, under, his skin, a slow sort of creep, and there’s a tightness around the Captain’s eyes, and there’s a tightness around the Captain’s mouth, and it’s terrifying, but he’s sitting there so calmly as they crawl across his skin, so reposed it almost feels like a sort of dignified stillness has stolen over him, which is hilarious because on the one hand he’s a gigantic man in nothing but his underwear and a curtain but on the other-

       “Oh my god!”

       A shrug, “They’ll go away.”

       “Wh- you can’t- that’s not okay that’s-!”

       “They’ll go away. What’s more important,” the Captain reaches across the desk and taps the side of his head, “is what’s going on up here.”

       He pulls back. He’s terrified. It's impossible to say anything because his own voice is coming at him from a man who’s standing as though he’s the only thing keeping this room from caving in, and those shiny blue beetle bruises are multiplying and multiplying. There’s hardly any skin left that doesn’t look beaten, but the Captain is still standing so tall, and he doesn’t know how.

       “You can’t keep all of this inside your head.”

       “I- I-.”

       “You can tell someone, Ben. Letting someone in isn’t a weakness.”

       “What the hell are you even talking about?”

       The Captain sits, sighs, and there’s a flash of tiredness across his face that doesn’t suit him, doesn’t look like it should be there, “There are people that need you. There are people that need you to be you. You can’t be you if you keep hiding everything away.”

       And suddenly, he’s angry again.

       More angry than he’s been in a while, and that’s saying something.

       And he’s hissing through his teeth as he tears at his necktie, as he tears at the buttons of that long sleeved shirt. He'd never do this in real life, not ever, but it's just a dream, and he's just talking to a guy in his underwear, and none of it matters for none of it's real, but he's still furious, and he has every right because-

       “You don’t have the faintest fucking idea who I am. You don’t have a damn clue, because I can tell you, nobody, nobody needs to know this!”

       He throws the shirt to the floor and throws his arms wide, turning so Captain Underpants can see the full extent of the bruises, turning so he can see the stretch marks and the scars and the rolls and the tremors. He should stop talking, he's gone far enough, but again, it's a dream. He's basically talking to himself at this point. What's it matter? What's it matter anymore? He can admit this, if only to himself.

       “I go to bed with the express purpose of waking up the next day and forgetting as much about me as I can. I do my job and I live my life as far away from me as possible. I don’t want anyone to know me because I don’t fucking want to know me, do you understand? This is a catastrophe. I am a catastrophe. Why would I subject someone to this?”

       “I understand-”

       “How can you understand!” He’s laughing, he’s crying, he’s at the point of screaming now, and the tightness in the Captain’s eyes gets tighter still, “How can you even begin to understand! You’re Captain fucking Underpants! You’re an actual god damn superhero! Everybody loves you!”

       The Captain smiles, all teeth and hard lines, all edges too familiar.

       He wakes up to the feeling of It kneading the blanket over his chest, takes the cat in his arms, rolls over, and cries.

       And cries.

       And cries.

       Like he hasn't cried in years.

       Until his alarm goes off and he gets up to get ready for work.

       And one more thought gets tucked into the lockbox, because nobody needs to know.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN EDITED. I'm trying to fix the timeline because I just remembered that the series isn't like Harry Potter- it's not one book per year, it's... well, most of the books fit into one year, but the series goes no further than two. I'm trying to rearrange some things so bear with me. Also, having him cry twice in this chapter was a bit much, so, no. The original can still be read here: https://rabbitybabbity.tumblr.com/post/162019351676/its-hard-ch-5 
> 
> There was a part where I cried writing this. I'm not sure if that means I was just really pandering to myself or if I actually did something good. I suppose you will all be the judge of that. 
> 
> Also, this is a lot longer than the other chapters. Most of them cap around 5 pages/ 2,500 words ish. This is 7 pages long totaling at a whopping 3,365. So that's fun 
> 
> One more thing: The song The Matador and the Acrobat by Will Knox fits perfectly for Captain Underpants and Ben Krupp so just... just take a second to listen to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJqgECkbA5o
> 
> For context:
> 
> This SUPER CUTE COLLECTION OF DOODLES INCLUDING ONE OF EDITH IN A SUMMER DRESS belongs to Gerald-Buttchins and can be found here: https://gerald-buttchins.tumblr.com/post/161906876481/doodles?is_highlighted_post=1
> 
> THIS super heartbreakingly cute comic depicting Harold giving Krupp a Father's Day card is owned by alienlove and can be found here: http://alienlovve.tumblr.com/post/161990795853/family-comes-and-goes-elementary-school
> 
> I'm also tacking onto here this other super cute picture by alienlove because dang it the soft boy needs affection so how about you give this picture a like/reblog and consider each one a hug for Benny, ey? : http://alienlovve.tumblr.com/post/161996211743/youre-beautiful-just-the-way-you-are-dont
> 
> Thank you Kyoo and Rick Sanchez for giving me some ideas for this chapter! They went a long way! If anyone else as anything they'd like to see pulled (if I can manage it), feel free to say so! 
> 
> For context on other small mentions:
> 
> Livestrong bracelets came out in 2004
> 
> The Patriot Act came out in 2001
> 
> And the American School System is still sorely in need of an upgrade. 
> 
> CHEERS!


	6. Chapter 6

       It's the last day of the first half of the first quarter, and he just needs to make it through.

       It’s the day that has been put off by chaos and misfortune, a six-hour marathon of exams and ‘educational films’ and rounds of jeopardy on things that have been taught from day one, and as he walks up and down the halls, there’s a cacophony of small voices echoing through the building leaving him dangling on the hard edge of a time loop. It feels like every year passes, always the same, and the ends always come regardless of the rest, but now he’s on the outside looking in, seeing the mechanical motions, feeling as though it's been an entire year and really, the year has only started, sliced into neat parts as though it were cut by a razor. (He’s mouthing along to the Spanish version of Hakuna Matata even while not really registering the music playing just down the hall, hearing the clicking of his shoes instead because it feels like the loudest thing inside his head and the sound drips down to the hole in his chest echoing, echoing.)

       It’s been a while since he’s slept.

       And it’ll be a while longer till he sleeps, because noon strikes and there’s a series of pop-pop-pops accompanied by screaming, and his heart leaps to his throat as he’s running for the cafeteria. Images unbidden come flying into his head, gory and grotesque, but when he opens the doors he finds-

       “WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?”

       There are coloured sparks scattering across the floor as pinwheels skitter between plastic chairs, sparklers dazzling brilliance held in tiny unsupervised hands. The whole room is silent save for the singular high pitched whistle of a firework on top of a cafeteria table going off and proceeding to set the ceiling tiles on fire.

       The school is evacuated.

       (It’s later that night, after he’s called the School Board and the PTO and Edith, after he’s hung up that phone for the last time, that he allows himself to collapse. He’s clutching his chest and feeling his heart skip beats beneath his hand and he’s wondering if this is it, if the coin had finally been flipped, if it’s going to be a heart attack.)

       The night is spent counting the seconds between each breath, eyes locked onto It who has fallen asleep on his feet with only the calm assuredness a cat can possess, and the cat is correct, because dawn does come and he’s not dead yet.

       So he drags himself up, finds his matching long-sleeved shirt and tie, because there’re papers that need to be signed, things that need to be overseen, children that need to be looked after, and now the cafeteria ceiling on top of all of the everything else- because of course. There are more kids this year than ever before, and where are they suppose to go? What is he suppose to do with them? There's not enough desks, there's not enough chairs. He can only ask the highschool so many times for their old rusty folding seats without the principal bringing it up to the school board again so he just begs the teachers to let the kids sit two to a chair for the time being because things will work out, they have to. He grits his teeth and curses whoever's in office because someone who was paid too much money had a dumb idea that everyone else agreed with and that dumb idea was believing that the school systems were fine on their own.

       Fuck this. Fuck all of this.

       He's so tired.

       He is so beyond fed up with counting pennies to the dollar and trying to explain to everyone why the school is broke, he's amazed some days he hasn't gone hoarse with how often he finds himself yelling over desks and phone lines. On top of everything, he's got a laundry list of kids he’s got to keep tabs on, including George and Harold, and in seeing their names once again, he’s more than ready for hell to appear on his doorstep (He knows it was them who started the fireworks, he knows, but he can’t prove it and if he can’t prove it he can’t punish them, and that pisses him off more than he can say).

       And like clockwork things fall into line with expectation, because as the dog days of summer slowly march towards fall, his desk slowly fills with reports of terrorized substitutes and water balloons being thrown from the top of the school and a small armada of goldfish showing up in just about anything and everything that can hold water. Nobody can prove it’s them, but he knows, oh he knows, and it’s not until another issue of their comic is smacked onto his desk that he can do much about it.

       “What is the meaning of this?!”

      And he grits his teeth, because it’s another call home, and one parent won’t answer and the other two will swear their kid’s an angel but he spits his words into the phone all the same because-

       “I’m not sure you’re actually aware of the damage your child as wreaked on this school.”

       He’s heard all the counter-arguments before, and before he could have chalked it up to another hour wasted, but he’s not letting go of it this time, he’s not letting go. He’s snapping sentences between his teeth and grinding out academic records because he wants them to pay, damn it. He wants them to be held accountable. He’s tired of them hiding behind corners and their parent’s ankles and he wants them to pay for what they’ve done. By the time he slams the phone back into its cradle he’s red faced and seething, breathing about as even as his pulse, he has to count the seconds between the inhales and the exhales because the trembling is coming back. If anyone asked he’d say he’s just tired, and even though tired doesn’t fit the way his body aches, he’ll keep using it, because any other word makes him anxious and he really, really, really doesn’t want to think too hard about this right now. (He hasn’t had another episode in a while but he’s still waiting, still recovering and waiting and holding his breath, because if he lets his guard down, he’s not sure what may happen.)

       In the back of his mind around the keyhole of that lockbox, aggravation stews, aggravation and fear.

       It’s still there when Kenny walks into his office the next day, nervously tugging at every bit of clothing he owns and not making eye contact when he says-

       “They finished taking down the burned ceiling tiles in the cafeteria.”

       “Oh, good.”

       “Yeah.”

       But Kenny’s still side-eyeing the window, head ducked down and away, and it’s so terribly out of place that he goes to ask, goes to say something, but then the man rounds on him and whispers in a rush-

       “I was so afraid. I was- I was just outside the cafeteria doors but didn’t know what I should do. I wanted to make sure the kids were all right but I was just- I-”

       And he’s shaking, shaking so hard he very well might shatter, and the only solution on hand is a plastic chair to let him fall into instead, and while Kenny’s in the chair, still shaking, still staring wide-eyed, he takes his hand as he kneels to the floor, and it’s like something finally snaps open, and everything gushes out of the man's mouth, “Ribble and Fitt ran in first, then you. Rected went around back to try to get the kids out the emergency exit. He told me to come with him but I- I couldn’t move. Oh my god if there had really been-”

       Kenny is gripping his hand so hard it feels like it’s going to break, but he doesn’t say that. What he says is that nobody knew, that nobody planned for it, that he doesn’t blame him, but Kenny’s still shaking, so he yells for the secretary to get Miles now, get him now, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s worried he’s only making it worse. (He stands in the corner as Miles works his magic over a Kenny now holding a glass of water, and when the counselor looks at him and asks if he’s alright, he lies.)

       The fear clings.

       And it’s that feeling that, somewhere in between driving from work to home, that clings tighter still when he turns on the radio.

       In between the midday talk shows and the advertisements and the bad music, the hosts casually throw around the dead, tossing names and numbers like betting chips to garner sympathy, treating it more like a business than a memorial service. He’s white-knuckling the steering wheel by the time it goes back to the music, so he changes the stations because he doesn’t want to hear anymore, but the next one tells him that Captain Underpants is the number one public threat and he almost breaks the dial clean off.

       There are people dying halfway around the world over weapons that never existed, people in the capital that are slowly bleeding the nation dry, people that think prayers and condolences are the proper way to treat calamity, but no, no that’s not the problem, it’s a guy in his underwear. (He has to pull the car over because the shaking isn’t stopping and he can feel himself weaving in his lane, has to count his breaths as he stuffs his thoughts into the lockbox while his skin crawls. When did he get so angry? When did he get so easily wound up? Or is it really that things are bad as they feel? He can't tell anymore.)

       He doesn’t make it home. In a knee-jerk reaction, he steers himself towards the 3rd street synagogue.

       He never went to the temple here, but he remembers the one his mother used to take him to every Saturday. There was white, everywhere, in the walls, in the pillars, in the tilling of the floor. This place isn’t like that, but the echo is the same, and that grounds him when he walks through the door to take a space in the far back, at the far left. The arching ceilings take his eyes up, up, and he doesn’t start praying, but there is a feeling at the back of his mind that begs-

       ‘Please

       Please

       Don’t let me screw this up.’

       He’s not even sure what he’s afraid of anymore, because there’s so much to be afraid of. There’s so much out of his control and out of his hands and he’s halfway out of his mind between the seven o’clock news and the hours he doesn’t even remember, between the adults acting like children and the children feeling like they have to grow up so quickly.

       ‘Please

       Don’t let me screw this up.’ 

       He read once in college that stress scars the heart, and he’s sure there’s irreparable damage there. It hasn’t quite felt right since it nearly exploded from his chest Monday, and even now, even here, it clumsily gallops on. It matches the scars that have formed around his knuckles, up his arms, that he doesn’t remember receiving the wounds for. It matches the scars on his shoulders, the scars on his stomach. He feels like an old toy, more stuffing and stitching than actual fabric, and what fabric there is left is stretched so fine he feels like, if he moves wrong, he’ll spill out on to the tiling here, but he bows his head and clenches his hands into fists and begs that that come what may, it will end alright. He never needed that kind of validation before, but maybe he needs it now because of the radio telling him that heroes are now considered threats to public safety, needs it now because of too many school shooting headlines, needs it now because everything he’s ever known has started to crumble around him, needs it now because the future looks so dark and uncertain that only those who fake a straight face will manage to make it though, and he needs to make it through, because so long as that elementary school is standing, he needs to be there.

       (It's all he's got.)

       ‘Please.’

       He takes a deep breath and holds it, lets it burn in his lungs as he stares into the depths of that high ceiling, before leaving quietly to pick up cat treats.

       The next morning starts the same, stays the same, until Harold walks into his office.

       It’s quite, too quiet, and he’s not sure what to say when the small blond boy walks himself in and sits down on the plastic chair in front of his desk that just yesterday held a crying man- a crying man who was thrown into a breakdown because of the actions of this small child. There’s a part of him that’s waiting for a tirade, a part of him that’s waiting for tears, and a part of him that’s just unsure. He looks up as a courtesy before going back to his paperwork because if he didn’t receive a call and didn’t get an email then he’s going to assume that all is well but-

       “What does it mean if I like boys?”

       And he stops.

       “…What?”

       And the poor kid looks like he’s trying to gather as much courage as he can, like he’s asking a bomb of a question, and of all the bombs he’s had nightmares of this is not one of them when Harold asks again-

       “What does it mean if I like boys?”

       He has to put his pen down because he’s not sure what he’d do if it was still in his hand.

       (He had been hoping for a confession, but he had to admit, this was not what he had in mind.) 

       The kid’s not making eye contact, and he’s thinking back to when he was younger than this child, younger than most of the children here, watching the news and hearing the outrage in response to the crisis that forged the 80's, the assassination of Harvey Milk, the fear.

       The absolute fear, the same kind present on that boys face.

       (Normally, he relishes it, but this time, it makes him sick.)

       And he remembers the fact that hate of love was considered more important than the love itself, the fact that hate of love may still be thought of as more important than love itself even now. A different lifetime, a different set of challenges, and yet- and yet-

       He sits there tapping his fingers on top of his desk, unsure of how to respond, until-

       “It means you like boys. What’s the big deal?” 

       And the lights

       In Harold’s eyes

       Turn on.

       He hasn’t seen the kid this happy since that damn tiger made its way into the school.

       (It’s in the span of those two second where the boy’s whole face lifts that he finally feels deserving of that small sketch in his mailbox, feels stronger in his conviction that yes, here, this is where he needs to be.)

       And those thoughts stay with him, that tentative sort of hope for the future he hasn’t felt in a while.

       He still watches Harold like a hawk though, and George, but they seem more wrapped up in their own personal issues, more preoccupied with turmoil he’s not privy too. At first he’s not sure if it’s about other boys or if it’s about ‘other boys’ so he watches them out of the corner of his eye over lunch duty just as they watch him out of the corner of theirs, just as they talk out of the sides of their mouths as if he cannot see. He doesn’t know what they’re discussing, and he’s not sure he wants to, but when Harold waves to him in the hall, he does, begrudgingly, wave back. (There’s a tentative peace in these moments, and it’s odd, because he can feel their eyes watching him, watching him, with something that almost feels like worry.)

       He’s not sure how he feels about the new circumstances, but so long as they get their work in, he doesn’t let it occupy too many of his thoughts.

       Because his thoughts are already occupied, as earlier that week Edith had approached him in the mail room as he was placing checks into boxes, as he was downing tums and tylanol while sipping ginger ale and hoping the room might stop spinning. She has muttered more into her hand and her hair than at him-

       “You know, it’s been really nice out recently. I-um, didn’t know if you’d maybe…maybe like to drop by and have lunch with me this weekend?”

       The word ‘yes’ had never left his mouth so fast.

       So now he’s staring into the mirror of his bathroom, trying to fix his toupee even while he’s eyeing the shiny blue beetle bruises that are starting to yellow as they creep out from around the cuffs of his shirt and around his neck, eyeing the way the sleeves pucker around the fat of his elbows and how it pulls around his chest, but no, she asked him, she asked him and he’s not going to let himself ruin this. There have been too many occasions where he’s pulled away because he’s afraid, because he’s disgusted, because what if she’s made the wrong choice, but today is not going to be one of them. If she didn’t want him she’d have said so, and damn it, he’d like to allow himself to be happy and not worry about made up consequences for believing something good can happen for once, please, thanks. He’s not going to ruin this. (He repeats this to himself out loud when the tension pulls, when he catches sight of the stretch marks around his stomach as he tucks in his shirt, when he sees that crisscross pattern of scars glinting.)

       He’s not going to ruin this.

       There’s a patch of green near her apartment, a small square of trees and grass, and that’s where they wind up on their backs looking into the blue of summer. The sounds of the city hedge around the perimeter of their small space of now but they’re ignored in favor of better pursuits, just as the sandwiches are forgotten as faces and seahorses and lions are picked out of the clouds as easily as one would pick up a conversation, as easily as someone would pick up someone elses hand, and he doesn’t know who moved what, but what he does know is his hand is in hers, and he hasn’t felt this comfortable in years.

       (He hasn't felt like this in so long. He hasn't allowed himself this luxury of freedom in so long.) 

       They watch as nimbus clouds bearing a summer storm move in from the west, great columns of white billowing that roll and boil tens of thousands of feet in the air, tens of thousands of feet high.

       “We should probably head in.”

       “Yeah, probably.”

       But they don’t, and he’s glad, because the grass is so warm, and her hand is so warm, and he loves watching the sun ebb and flow across her face like waves. He’s fixated, so terrifically hooked, on her crow’s feet and her freckles, the way her crooked teeth overlap, that he’s almost caught by surprise when the rain does finally come pouring down.

       The three flights of stairs to her apartment are taken two steps at a time, laughing at nothing and everything, soaked to the bone and beyond enthralled at the fact that they are alive.

       And he’s not sure who moved first, but somewhere between the door closing behind them and the crack of lightening outside there’s a split second where everything seems to click, where he feels ever nerve firing and every atom of his skin prickle as though he were electrified, where her eyes flash in the low lighting like those illegal fireworks from when he was seven, where it’s just perfectly right and-

       They kiss

       (He doesn't know who moved first, and sure he’s not doing it right, but-)

       There’s summer in her mouth, warmth in her skin, the smell of rain nestling in her hair, and it’s so all-encompassing and overwhelming-

       He could swear he was floating.

       The need to breathe breaks the kiss, and through the spinning of his head he can feel his feet reconnect with the floor, the gentlest landing a lover could ever ask for.

       And she’s smiling.

       He can’t help but kiss her again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN EDITED! I'm still tinkering with the timeline and again- the issue is that the books don't go from one year to the next- the whole series covers a span of about two years, I think. I needed to fix what I had in order to make it work. Took out the father's day card bit and replaced it with something similar but still different enough to make it work. Also, yes, surprisingly enough, a lot of schools in Ohio start in early August rather than Late August. If you wish to read the origional, it is available here: https://rabbitybabbity.tumblr.com/post/162170825501/its-hard-ch-6 
> 
> *wheeze*  
> Oh my god this was a struggle.
> 
> Kathy Kozachenko was the first public homosexual to have won a position in public office - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Kozachenko
> 
> Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person to be elected into public office in California - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk
> 
> The first incarnation of the LGBTQA+ flag was created in 1978 by Vietnam War Veteran and Drag Performer Gilbert Baker
> 
> 80's AID's epidemic which not only decimated huge swaths of the gay community but also raised fear and hate of LGBTQA+ identifying individuals to new heights. http://www.factlv.org/timeline.htm
> 
> Right  
> There were several things I wanted to add but couldn't, including AngeryDJ's wonderful concept of Captain Underpants talking to Edith about Krupp and helping her get ready for dates and I just- I love it. It didn't work here though because I want to give that room to breathe, not just stuff it in. It should work out in the next chapter though... ;) 
> 
> *snap*
> 
> Genalovestoons came up with the excellent idea of the boys ending up in summer school and...well, I don't need to explain how much I loved that. 
> 
> A guest mentioned that the police would probably be somewhat freaking out over the fact that, well, Captain Underpants exists so I wove that in. It strikes me now that such a thing was never actually dealt with in the books... 
> 
> KetrinCookie asked for Krupp and the boys getting along and OH BOY YOU GOT IT. 
> 
> Keep the suggestions coming! I love them! For all of you asking if I'll bring Alien Edith into this I WANT TO SO BAD but can't/won't until the movies address it. If I want to keep this as a companion piece rather than a spin off/au thing, then I've got to bide my time until such an opportunity arises. If they DON'T reveal Edith to be an alien well then dang it I'll deal with that when I come to it because...I want it, so badly. 
> 
> Side note- I've never actually written a kiss scene in my life. That took the longest. I listened to Your Hand in Mine by Explosions in the Sky WHICH ACTUALLY would have been a song that was out around this time because the album it was on was published in 2003. Go figures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdiY6kijYHE  
> Cheers!


	7. Chapter 7

       He leaves the radio on when it plays love songs now.

       He use to change the station, chew the inside of his cheek and tell himself they were all stupid, and they are, they are still stupid, but now he finds himself more often than not letting his car fill with lyrics about slow dancing and soft looks and he doesn’t have the courage to do that in his house because It has a tendency to watch him and yeah, It may just be a cat, but it’s the principle of the matter. He doesn’t feel like sharing this yet, not yet, so he lets his mind slip away sitting in the driveway with the windows rolled up and the radio low because he doesn’t want the neighbors to hear as Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Spanish Moss’ whispers through the speakers just barely over the sound of the air conditioner. Sitting there with his eyes staring into nothing he lets his thoughts go flying, and yes, yes this song is a sad song, yes the lover leaves his beloved, no he’s not a moron, but in not being a moron he also knows that all things eventually end, so perhaps this is fitting, a song about loving the moment, a song about loving every instance with a person, and knowing that person will eventually have to leave (The worry he will do something to ruin it still hangs around his shoulders, and perhaps at this point it’s silly, but he knows better than to count out bad karma and stupidity because he’s got both in spades.)

       He tucks the worry into the lockbox, though the lockbox is already so full.

      There’s only so much that can be done in the span of twenty-four hours, because between the papers and the payroll, the billing and the battling of the school board, what time is there to pick at the things inside that box, to take them out and examine them and pull them apart like pulling guts out of frogs?  He was never one for dissection, so perhaps it’s a little out of avoidance, but on the one hand, nothing has happened yet, not yet, and on the other, he doubts he could call up Mike and ask him, ‘Have you ever thought about who’d show up to your funeral? Have you ever wondered if you were worth anything at all? Have you ever thought about what it really means to love someone and whether or not it’s worth it in the end?’ so instead when those phone calls happen the conversation more or less goes to-

       “So what’s new with you?”

       “Oh not much, same old same old. Oh, did I tell you what Percy was just telling me the other day? He’s got some major litigation on his plate, really hoping to do some good with it.”

       “That’s great.”

       “Isn’t it?”

       But somewhere in all the white-noise chatter, there’s a switch, because suddenly one night-

       “Hey, Ben?”

       “Yeah?”

       “I uh…I’m getting married.”

       He’s frozen with the phone in the crook of his neck, leaning against the doorframe between the family room and the kitchen scooping wet cat food out of the can as Mike’s words hit him like a brick.

       “…What?”

      “Yeah! It’s- it’s kinda sudden.”

       “Kind of sudden? I’ve been talking to you for what- two, three months now? When did you even meet this-”

       “About two months ago, and Ben-”

       “Two months?”

       “Ben, Ben she’s amazing, she’s just beautiful-”

       “That’s not the point, Mike- jesus. Two months?”

       “It was just right! I don’t know man, it was just right!”

       The conversation ends with an obligatory congratulations and the promise that an invitation will be sent soon enough to tell him when and where the wedding will be, because he’s invited, of course he’s invited, why wouldn’t he be (and he’s so sick on the inside because of course it would be easy for Mike, of course, and of course he’d hate how easy it is for Mike to be happy because he’s an ugly, jealous asshole and he knows it.)

       There’s bitterness in his mouth the next morning that has nothing to do with the coffee.

      And he’s grinding his teeth for the rest of the day because he can’t help but chew on the fact that no, he can’t let anything be easy, he really can’t. He wishes he could, but somewhere between the start and the end, things never fail to go pear shaped, and nine out of ten it’s because of him, just as somewhere between the hours of 7 and 3 he has to deal with a call about ants in the kitchen, and the inspector for the ceiling telling him “It’ll be another month,” and another teacher walking out, so he has to go down and try to teach a class of 4th graders Civil War history which he hasn’t been quizzed on since college, and he can’t remember all the dates and names, but he does remember all the different ways people died. Of course he can’t teach them that because the Common Core doesn’t ask about gangrene or prison camps or trauma, it asks about dates and names, and so once again everything goes to shit, (and it’s not until he’s in his car heading home that they all come swarming back to him, every sergeant and number, and he’s so pissed that when he’s at a red light and it clicks with him that the name of Lincoln’s vice president was Hannibal Hamlin, he beats his face into the steering wheel because Of. Fucking. Course.)

       God, he’s tired.

       And the lockbox gets heavier still.

       To say he’s on edge is an understatement, because he’s waiting, waiting, waiting for the other foot to drop. Things are turning too good too quickly, and he was never taught much of fire and brimstone, but he had enough Catholic friends once to fill him in on the whole ‘pride before the fall’ thing and no, prideful is never how he would describe himself, but it’s that whole idea of toeing the line, isn’t it, going for what you can’t have, pushing the boundaries until they crush you, flying as high as possible until your wings melt and you plummet towards the sea and drown, and it’s when he gets to that analogy that he goes for the ginger ale and tums because he can feel something coming, he swears it, he can feel the end just around the corner. Maybe it’ll be of his own volition, maybe it’ll be something that just happens- who knows, who knows- but it’s going to come in a blur and it’s going to leave him bleeding, he can feel it. (He can’t stop himself from going higher, can’t make himself shut the radio off and tell himself it’s not worth it, can’t stop hoping that maybe things will continue to get better, it because by this point it won’t work, so he resigns himself with knowing that he’ll go as high as he can until it all comes crashing down.) 

       And oh, the crater this will make when it all comes crashing down.

       And it’s the weight of that which occupies his mind later that week, all the way to dinner when he’s tapping his foot and waiting for his pizza to be done as the guys behind the counter talk in fast Italian. It's been so long since he's heard the language, he can only pick out bits and chunks like peppers and tomatoes in heavy sauce. His eyes are going between watching a boy fling dough as though it were a mindless art and the television where the news is on, and they’re talking about the economy, and a man with a smile too wide and a shirt too straight cut insists that-

       “The market’s gonna boom, just you watch. It’s gonna happen like-”

 

_*snap*_

 

       He blinks.

       He’s in his bed.

       The room is dark.

       A whole day is gone,

       And his whole face hurts,

       And he is afraid.

       This was supposed to be over.

       This was supposed to be over.

       He’s clenching his fists,

       Forcing himself to breathe

       Even though it

       Hurts

       Wondering what he’ll find in the mirror this time.

       But when he goes to stand.

       His knee gives out.

       There are black spots swimming behind his eyes, and as he lays on the carpet, he’s breathing hard through his nose, trying not to cry, trying to get his hold on the floor, trying to push back, grabbing the window sill while his mind is spinning because please not again, not again, not again-

       He slowly stands

       Leaning

       Against the window pane

       Counting his breaths

       Counting his heart beats

       Counting the drops of rain

       On the

       Outside

       Of the glass

       Through the black spots

       That swim

       To

       And

       Fro

       Across his vision.

       When he has the strength

       He

       Slowly

       Makes his way towards the bathroom,

       Afraid,

       Because he knows he will find something ugly there in the mirror,

       He can just feel it.

       (He closes his eyes and swallows before turning on the light.)

       His skin looks like the soft underbelly of tree bark, peeling and off-color and swarmed with shiny blue beetle bruises crawling across his skin, ducking under arms and over shoulders and around the corners of his neck, across his torso and down his legs, across half his face, leaving in their wake wounds which will become scabs which will become scars.

       On the countertop is a box of Peanuts band-aids he knows he’s never seen before.

       And he screams.

       (He does not sleep the rest of that night, Charlie Brown watching him from the trash can.)

       He sees them out of the corner of his eye as he sits in the living room, It on his lap, the television on, and the walls glow in the light from the news showing pictures of explosions and fires and workmen staggering from the wreckage of the plastics plant on the far other side of the city.

       “It was Captain Underpants who saved me,” coughs one man, squinting into the lights, “He pulled me out like it was nothing. Got Floyd too.”

       Here the man points off-screen, and when the camera turns, there's someone on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance, and he leans forward because the skin, the colour of his skin, that looks uncomfortably familiar. In the low blue of the television it doesn’t look quite the same, but he knows what he saw in the vanity mirror, he knows what he saw, and he tells himself that the fact that he cannot remember anything is just a side effect to the shock. Yes, yes that’s what happened, he was just too close. He’s not having a relapse. Thank goodness Captain Underpants was there though, because if he looks this bad when he was several blocks away, he can’t imagine what that guy looks like having had to go in there. Thank goodness that guy’s around, yeah? God, he couldn’t imagine having to pull people out of there. (He ignores the fact that really, he doesn’t think a plastics chemical blast could have gotten him inside of a brick building a solid fifteen minute walk away in favor of not having a meltdown. He focuses instead on the fact that at least he's not the guy he proceeds to watch be loaded into another ambulance.)

       The sun has not risen by the time he is ready for work, but he goes in anyway.

       He’s white-knuckling the steering wheel and going ten miles under the speed limit the entire way because he’s so afraid he’s going to run into something. He parks at the far end of the parking lot and is grateful that nobody is there yet, grateful that when he’s in the faculty room and the coffee maker gurgles as papers rattle in his hands, the cuffs of the long sleeves tight around his wrists and sweat dripping down his brow, no one is there to see. It’s too hot, it’s too hot, it’s too hot for any of this, but he’ll be damned if they catch him bleeding and beaten, because there’s too much of an image to uphold, and if he demands that the children be unbreakable in the face of the state then damn it he’s going to be unbreakable in the face of whatever the fuck is going on because good god he doesn’t know right from left anymore.

       He’s grateful he doesn’t have to lie this morning, doesn’t have to tell anyone he’s fine.

       But come lunch, there’s news another teacher is threatening to quit, something about the last ten minutes of class yesterday and purple paint in their shoes, something about glitter glue and googlie eyes, and he doesn’t even blink when he calls George and Harold up to his office. He doesn’t have the energy to shout, but there’s something about them, quiet, unsettling, something about them watching him with wide eyes and trembling lips as though they’re about to cry that is unnerving, and when he gives them lunch and after school detention and they don’t even try to fight it, there’s a split second where he wonders if Joseph maybe had it right. Maybe he should have sold his soul to ten grain malt whisky and fermented potatoes, let the kidney failure kill him while he was young and still ahead (or, if it waited to kill him, at least he wouldn’t be this fucking anxious all the time because christ, by this point it feels like he’s jumping at suggestions of shadows.)

       (He’s not having a relapse, he swears. He’s not having a relapse. The episodes are over. Please.)

       He keeps twitching, keeps flinching, keeps winding higher and higher, keeps feeling his own flesh crawling and he can’t make it stop.

       So he’s in the corner of the cafeteria hovering over the lunch detention table, no pacing, no threatening stares, just looking into the nothing straight ahead with his fists balled in his pockets, counting down the seconds until he can leave when-

       “Oh my god, Ben!”

       And Edith’s right there, as if she materialized, and she’s just within his blind spot so he flinches as she reaches up to touch his face, he flinches, pulls back, hates himself oh hates himself for that moment where she pulls back too.

       “What happened to you?”

       “Nothing.”

       “That’s not nothing! Why aren’t you home? Where are the band-aids I gave you?”

       “Edith, stop.”

       He can feel his teeth grinding, feel his lips pulling back, feel the cracking of his joints as he balls his hands into fists feels his heart rate skyrocket. He’s swaying on his feet now, and if she pushes him he will go down, if she touches him-

       She’s going to touch him-

       “Don’t.”

       She’s going to touch him-

       “Ben-”

       She’s going to-

 

       “DON’T!”

 

       The echo is so loud.

       It fills the cafeteria so that there is nothing else, nothing but the silence after the ringing.

       She looks as though he hit her.

       (There’s a part of him that wants to hit something- hit something- and as soon as that thought slaps him-)

       He’s running.

       He’s running and running and running far out past his car, past the school property line across the street and through the neighborhood. The houses are flying past him and it feels like his feet are hardly touching the ground but he needs to get out of that building out of his head out of this skin that feels like it’s trying to crawl off his bones. God fuck everything is a burning swirl that keeps swinging him around until his feet find their way back to his house. He’s dripping in sweat, not sure if he’s crying or just unable to breathe as he collapses against the mailbox, shaking, shaking.

       “Oh, hello!”

       The face of the mailman is there, straining a smiling from his tiny humming postal van.

       He wants to die.

       It’s the first time the thought has been put into words, actually clicking into place in that order.

       He wants to die.

       “I guess I can just give these to you directly then!” The guy’s voice is too sing-song, too cheerful, and the next thing he knows there’s a stack of envelopes and a postcard being shoved into his face, “Have a nice day!”

       The postman goes toddling down the street, stopping every few feet before carrying on. The tiny postal van goes on humming, the birds go on singing, the sun goes on shining.

       He wants to die, but he looks at the mail instead.

       On the very top is the postcard, the save the date invitation, with Mike and his fiancée smiling bright white smiles.

       He punches the mailbox clean off its post.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *clutches chest*  
> Yeah nah this hurt to write, so before you go on with your 'how could you do this to me,' the answer isn't that I want to hurt you, the answer is I love hurting myself apparently and y'all are just collateral damage.  
> I'm sorry <3 
> 
> On a much more serious note, I wrote all the suggestions you guys gave me down, but for the life of me I can only remember the individual's who's ideas I requested to use. As such... *gestures* I love you all enough to give you chunks of what you wanted, and thank you for suggesting them.  
> AngeryDJ came up with the idea of Captain Underpants chatting with Edith about Krupp- it's not SHOWN but it certainly happened (I'm sure you guys can figure out when). I'm planning on referencing that conversation Krupp doesn't remember in ch 8 as well and, honestly, I'm probably going to do a one-shot of that conversation. It may be tacked into 'Getting to Know You' and that just ending up as the collective of occasions where Edith interacts with the Captain but, really, who knows. I just- I liked it too much to let go of.
> 
> ThePinkestPug made a comic about Krupp singing in the car and the Captain kinda filtering through. I don't know if I saw it before writing this chapter and planning out the next or not- brains are weird- so I asked them if I could keep the scene and thankfully they said yes. The actual singing bit will show up in ch 8 but...well...just don't get your hearts ready for fluff just yet. http://thepinkestpug.tumblr.com/post/161355889472/sloppy-comic-about-underroos-leaking-into-bennys
> 
> Again, any and all suggestions/requests are welcome! Doesn't mean I'll be able to do them all, but that SURE AS HECK MEANS I'LL TRY! I'll also write your names down alongside the suggestions too, because I apparently can't trust my memory at the moment.
> 
> Also, thank you all so very, very much for your kudos and comments. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to know that people are enjoying the work. I don't think I've ever written anything so well received on here so this is... a very nice occurrence. I appreciate you all very much.
> 
> Cheers!


	8. Chapter 8

      The next day he goes into work, he pretends nothing happened.

      Because nothing’s happened.

      Not yet.

      He schedules time off for the wedding, holding the invitation in his hands as he keys his own vacation request into the school spreadsheet and emails Calvin asking him to cover for just one day, just a Friday early in the month of September, but those three days in Sandusky are going to feel like years. The bachelor party alone he worries may kill him, but Mike begged him to come over the phone, insisting-

      “You can’t do this to me, man! You know, Paul’s gonna be there! It’s not a party when it’s just two, you gotta come! One last big hurrah, right? Besides, we haven’t seen each other in years!”

      So he grits his teeth and puts in the dates and hates everything about this, hates that it’s going to be a two and a half hour car ride to hell, hates that he’s going to have to sit in the most beautiful church in that quaint little marina town, hates that the reception is going to be at the Sandusky Yacht Club because wow, just wow, talk about being a fish out of water right next to the fucking water. He’s a glutton for punishment, so he chews on his fingernails and looks up pictures of the place online, and even in all their grainy yellow-tinted glory, he can already tell he’s going to be the odd man out. The chairs have those fancy fabric covers on them and everything’s white so you know people aren’t supposed to be human and spill things (and he’s already scoping out corners where he can stand and blend into the walls because he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want this, but he can’t find it in him to say no.)

      (How the hell did they manage to plan a wedding so quickly anyway? What kind of freak of nature IS Mike?) 

      He misses Edith.

      It’s only been a day, but he hasn’t even seen her.

      When she walks into his office later in the week though, he can’t seem to get the words he wants to say out of his mouth. She stands there in the doorway, leaning against the frame as the light from outside throws her face into relief, leaning with her head tilted just ever so slightly away from him while her eyes are pinning him to the back of his chair like he’s a bug in a display case, and there is silence.

      Silence.

      “I saw you're taking time off.”

      She speaks softly, but the words feel so loud, carrying across the room and landing on his desk with a heavy thump, and he can smell her perfume and today’s lunch slowly creeping in as her statement settles in his head and he can feel his pulse quicken.

      “Yes.”

      Edith nods, looks away in that moment, looks outside into the light, hair falling in front of her face again.

      “I’m glad. I think you need a break.”

      “What?”

      And she looks back at him, and though her eyes are hard, her words quiver just a bit, “I’m really worried about you, Ben. You haven’t been… I think it’s good that you’re finally giving yourself a break. You need it.”

      And if he was having trouble breathing before he’s most certainly going to die now because jesus christ he does not deserve her. He’s known this since day one and maybe that’s why he’s been so hesitant this entire time, because she’s the most beautiful, full stop. She is the most beautiful person inside and out, and he’s just an ugly, ugly wreck. She deserves better. Part of him really hopes this has clicked with her now and the other part of him is selfish, just wants her to stay even though he doesn’t deserve it, but his mouth moves before his brain does and he says-

      “I’m going to a friend’s wedding.”

      Edith blinks, mouth parting, eyes widening, “Oh.”

      “Yeah. Not-not much of a vacation but…thanks.”

      “Do I, um, do I need to find a dress?”

      “What?”

      She’s smiling now, and his stomach is sinking through the floor. She’s smiling and twirling the edge of her apron between her fingers saying, “Well I mean, I don’t think anything that I have would be good enough to wear in attendance to a wedding but I mean, well-. And you know, this could still work out as a break still, maybe for both of us, if you think about it. Maybe-”

      “You’re not coming with me.”

      He could have phrased that so much better.

      ‘I wasn’t given a plus one on the invite,’ ‘The wedding is just a bunch of close friends,’ ‘The whole thing is going to be a shit-show.’

      He could have phrased that fifty million different ways and they would have all been better.

      But the words are out of his mouth, and her hands have stopped twisting her apron, and her entire face falls as she just whispers, “Oh.”

      And she’s gone.

      One moment she’s by the door. The next, she’s gone.

      (And once again, he has ruined something beautiful.)

      He looks at the papers on his desk without really seeing them and tries to stuff the entire conversation in the lockbox, but there is no room, so it settles in the hole in his chest and festers.

      And festers.

      And day proceeds with hands fluttering, lifting and dropping, never settling on any one thing for too long because he can’t bring himself to touch anything right now. Come nightfall he’s pacing, words tumbling from his mouth as he goes over the conversation again and again and again and It is watching from the top of the lounger but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care because he should have said so many things.

      “I’d ask him if you could come with me but everything is on such short notice and- I never told him about you- no- Edith, I don’t even want to go, so I’d hate to have to drag you with me -I’d love for you to come with but- I love-.”

      (He comes to a screeching halt, hands over his mouth, cupping the words, forcing them back. He’s not ready to admit that. He’s not ready to admit the severity of what he’s just ruined. )

      He feels like he’s being eaten alive from the inside out.

      He can feel the gnawing as he’s standing for measurements, trying not to make eye contact with the tailor whose fitting him for a suit as he looks at the statues of men much younger than he is, much thinner than he is, lining the walls. They are pristine, pale and faceless, all muscle tone and perfect hands whose poses show off the sheen of the suites under the blinding fluorescents, and if they had eyes he would swear they were watching him, judging him. He hasn’t been fit for a suit in years. The last time he wore one had been for the funeral of a great aunt, and that had to have been at least ten years ago. He remembers the whole thing, down to the wood grain of the seats in the synagogue, and he focuses on that versus the now. When the man asks him casual questions that mean nothing, he gives one-word answers that mean nothing, because what’s the point in trying? What’s the point in even making an attempt at connection? Just go with it. Just lie. (Pretend it’s fine long enough to get out of there in one piece.)

      He feels like he’s leaving bits of himself behind as he makes for the door though, receipt in hand.

      He feels like he’s leaving bits of himself everywhere.

      Days are spent in countdown mode, the tick of the clock measuring how long he has left, and the hours feel like years. Halfheartedly he tries to find Edith, tries to figure out what to say, how to apologize, but every place he looks is where she isn’t and eventually, it’s not lax anymore, it’s desperate. There are split seconds where he wonders if he imagined the whole thing, but her name is on the payroll and the taste of her is in his mouth. When he asks about her the other members of staff just raise an eyebrow and say-

      “She’s in the kitchen like she always is. Why?”

      But when he goes, she’s never there.

      He’s standing in the kitchen again though, stock still, one hand on the greasy stove top and the other a tight fist in his pocket as he calls out her name, but the only reply he gets is a tiny cough and he finds Melvin, legs tucked neatly beneath him, on top of a sack of onions.

      He opens his mouth, closes it, then, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

      “I know,” the voice is so small, and the hands that fiddle with the hem of his shirt are so small, and all of him is so small sitting on top of that bag of onions so he takes a deep breath and sits down next to the boy instead of allowing himself to crumble.

      “So what are you doing here then?”

      A shrug, a lack of eye contact.

      “…Melvin, you’re not in trouble.”

      The boy looks up at that, just a little bit, out of the corner of his eye, and when the hands stop twisting it’s taken as a good sign.

      “You’re not mad at me?”

      “No, no I’m not mad. I just want to know why you’re here when you should be in class.”

      And he can see the boy tense, can see the shoulders hunch, can see the mouth twitch as words fail to make it out and suddenly, he understands. He understands this boy better than he has ever understood himself, and maybe that’s pathetic, but when, against better judgement, he opens his arms and the kid quietly accepts the hug, it doesn’t feel pathetic. It feels like he’s doing his job right for once, because this was never about him and it never will be, no matter how much it feels like his heart is breaking, because in that instant he is reminded that the emphasis of his life isn’t him, it never was. It was always about the students, and thank god for that.

      He’s not very good with food, but he makes the kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and as he sees Melvin off, he takes it as a bitter victory, because he’s determined to not let that kid end up like him.

      The world doesn’t need another person like him.

      But that doesn’t help him much when he’s half an hour into a two and a half hour drive and the hole in his chest starts gnawing at the rest of him, and the lockbox begins to shake just as he passes outside of Lima city limits. The new suit is laid out on the back seat and he tries not to notice it because when he does he can’t help but compare it to the stiff, still body of his great aunt. He is keenly aware of the fact that if he were to kill himself now, right now, unbuckle his seatbelt and run the car off the road so as to flip it or wrap it around the odd tree, they’d probably bury him in that suit. They’d get him a dinky grey tombstone the shape of a cinderblock and bury him in the suit he was going to wear to a wedding and how fucked up is that? The synagog would not be very full, and nobody would make eye contact, and the dirt would eventually eat that last stone reminder of him and that’s when he turns the radio on at full blast because he does not wish to be alone with his thoughts right now.

       (His hands are shaking and he won’t look at them either, won’t look at the pink and peeling skin, won’t look at the bruises, won’t make eye contact with himself in the rearview mirror, wills himself not to think of Edith’s face when he screamed at her, because being in a car with those things on his mind is dangerous, so why can’t they stay in the lock box a little longer.)

      He wants to die, but there are places he needs to be.

      He’s out in god’s country another half an hour in, all rolling fields and flat lands, where it looks like maybe you can reach heaven if you drive for long enough, straight enough, fast enough, keep your eyes on the horizon where it looks like the sky meets the distant road far past the everything of everything else. He finds himself passing the few other cars out on the road too quickly at this glaring midday hour, and when he has to make the turn he can feel the car not quite fully commit to the curve, not quite fully make it with all four tires completely on the ground, though his thoughts go flying back, thinking of home, and he slows the car down just a little and moves back into the correct lane, (though he tells himself this is because he doesn’t want the responsibility of having to pay back a ticket, he tells himself this even as he can feel himself shaking.)

      The radio is still on, and still loud, and it’s doing its best, but he’s glad he finally makes it to Sandusky because, quite frankly, its best was barely enough. 

      He sets himself up in a dirty motel room and calls Mike from the phone at the front desk just as the clock strikes 2.

      “Oh excellent!” his voice is tinny over the receiver, almost pliable, “I’ll pick you up in a bit! We can get an early dinner and then head out with Paul!”

      “You sure you don’t want me to drive?”

      “Nah, nah, I can get you!”

      So the afternoon is spent over salads with soggy bits of chicken and hard cheese, the glass of ice water really the only thing he’s enjoying outside of the fact that Mike is Mike, and Mike does not ask about the bruises, does not point out his skin, does not make a comment about the weight he’s gained, and does not poke fun at his baldness. They choose instead to laugh at old jokes and bad jokes in the polite way that friends who have not seen each other in years do in trying to remember how it all goes again, ignoring the news on the overhead system that whispers about a possible attack from North Korea. And Mike…Mike looks good. Thin and trimmed and tanned sporting a fashionable three o’clock shadow in this now five o’clock slant of sun.

      Then again, Mike’s always looked good, and he’s always envied him a little bit for it.

      (The contents of the lockbox stirs, snarls at the perfection that it can see from behind the keyhole.)

      The ice in the water clinks against his teeth as he sips just before he asks, “So how did you meet her?”

      Mike’s face blooms in a crooked grin, “Online.”

      “Online?”

      “Yeah man! That’s been a thing for…jeeze, gotta be ten years now. Nobody goes out anymore.”

      “Well shit.”

      “You seriously didn’t know?” and Mike laughs, “Of course you don’t know, you don’t even have a cell phone. Aw, you’ve got to try it.”

      He shakes his head, chuckling into his glass, “Not my speed.”

      “You could at least give it a go!”

      “Nah.”

      “Shoot, Ben, don’t tell me you’ve been holding out on me. Did you meet someone?”

      And Mike is suddenly very close, leaning across the table, brimming with excitement and the hole in his chest aches. He must have made a face, because Mike’s suddenly falters.

      “Oh.”

      “…Yeah.”

      “Should I ask?”

      “Probably not.”

      Mike leans back in his seat, “Fair enough.”

      They pay the bill and pick up Paul after that, who waves to his wife as he steps out from the lobby of his hotel and into Mike’s car. He can’t help but notice that Paul’s thinner than he remembers him as he watches the man buckle his seat. It shows in his face, it shows his hands as they clap the back of the driver’s side as he says-

      “So, what kind of chaos have you two been causing without me?”

      Mike doesn’t bring up their dinner conversation and instead pesters Paul for information about his little girl and how she’s doing, if she’s walking, if she’s talking, if she’s as much of a hell-raiser as Paul’s wife is, and from the passenger seat he smiles and listens to the two of them go back and forth.

      Every once in a while, there is a moment where he knows Joseph would have said something, made a comment and needled one of them just because he could, but he doesn’t point it out.

      Nobody points it out, but he can feel that everyone notices.

      It’s dark by the time they make it to their destination, a dinky looking place with a red roof across the street from a neighborhood and the whole thing just feels off. They’re let in by a man with breath the smell of cancer caused by secondhand smoke and when Paul elbows him and says,

      “Wow, his hairpiece is worse than yours,”

      He elbows back with a grin and mutters under his breath, “At least I can pretend I have hair. You just look like a horse ate yours clean off the top of your head, or was it your wife that pulled it out?”

      “Fuck you, and your hair looks like a dead spider.”

      “He’s not lying,” chimes in Mike, grinning over his shoulder as they stumble through the dark for seats, “but Paul, you either need to shave or get a hairpiece because dude, it’s bad.”

      “Well fuck you too then.”

      They’re in old padded lawn chairs by the time the lights go up on a stage that looks like it’s been built under a car lift and decorated with whatever the 70’s could regurgitate from its dad’s closet. He can feel his dinner bubbling in the back of his throat but it’s not until the beaded curtain parts and a woman walks out wearing nothing but plastic gold sequins that he stands.

      “You know-”

      “Aw, Ben-”

      “Come on man!”

      “You know I’m just gonna go outside-”

      “Ben!”

      “We just got here!”

      “Yeah and I’m just gonna go outside so I’ll- I’ll-”

      He’s out the door before they can say anything else. The heavy cool of summer evenings hits him as he leans against the painted brick of the wall, the roar of a passing semi-truck rushing past him on his left. He can feel the sweat in his palms meet the sweat on his brow as he holds his face in his hands, breathing hard through his nose, willing himself to stop twitching because jesus christ he’s fourty-three you’d think he’d be over the discomfort by now, learned how to be normal by now, but he can’t get a good grasp on it. He holds himself like he’s guarding something, one hand against his mouth, one wrapped around himself, watching silhouettes play against the curtains of a bay window on a house across the street. That blue staticky light from the tv throws movement into relief and he can see people walking back and forth, back and forth, meeting in the middle only briefly to then once again move back and forth, back and forth.

      He doesn’t know why Mike is doing this.

      He doesn’t know- he doesn’t know- and that infuriates him to no end because Mike is getting married. Mike found a person he claims he wants to spend the rest of his life with and if that’s the case why the hell did he set this up? Why is he in there with all those people who are lonely and who have nobody and who just want to get their rocks off and furthermore why is Paul okay with this? Straight-laced Paul, looking more thin and ragged than ever, with his nice job and his nice life, why is he condoning this? Joseph would have been out here with him, Joseph- well no Joseph would have wanted to be inside and would have paid extra money for extra features but he would have at least come out and checked. Why’s he got to be the odd man out? Why is it that he can never let things just be easy, just let himself enjoy something? Why does he have to make things awkward? Why’s it got to be that he’s the one who can’t stand this because of all the things he cannot tolerate this unfairness is one of them, this unfairness that he is the person who could have the most to gain from this situation and yet all he feels is-

      Discomfort.

      Disgust.

      He thinks of Edith and wishes she were here.

      No, he wishes he was there, at her apartment, sitting on that threadbare pullout couch with the tartan pillows. There’d be empty Chinese takeout containers on the table and one of those British sitcoms she likes so much on the television and you’d be able to see the oranges and yellows of the city in the night from that gigantic window in her kitchen and everything would smell of her and all he’d have to do is reach out and take her hand. He could reach out and take her hand and hold her and tell her-

      Ah, but he ruined that, didn’t he.

      He shudders, draws his arm tighter around himself, listens as another tractor-trailer roars by and he is once again reminded of the fact that he could just be buried in the suit now hanging in his motel room closet and let the earth eat him.

      He eyes the road.

      (Maybe Joseph had it right.)

      There’s a bang, the sound of people, the babble of conversation as the entrance breaks open like a dam and suddenly Paul’s ushering him back to the car.

      “Come on.”

      “What happened?”

      Mike’s cackling, wiping tears from his face as he collapses into the driver’s seat and Paul won’t answer so he asks again, “What happened?”

      “Poor woman’s leg fell off.”

      “Wh- what?”

      “Her lee-hee-heeg!” Mike’s turned the car on and put it in gear, but his head is on the steering wheel and his whole body is shaking as he laughs, “Her prosthetic just popped the fuck off when she tried to climb the car lift.”

      Maybe it’s the shock of the moment, maybe it’s out of social habit, but he can feel giggles bubbling out his throat as he grins and says, “You’re shitting me.”

      “NO!”

      “Oh my god Ben it was horrible.”

      “IT WAS HILARIOUS!”

      “It was awful, I feel so bad-”

      “HALFWAY UP THE POST AND IT JUST-” Mike gestures with a grand lifting and dropping of his arms, slamming his palms onto the dashboard as he cackles again, “YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE OH MY GOD!”

      (He probably should have been, should have been a good friend and stayed, but as he lets himself sink into his seat and listen to Mike and Paul go back and forth, he’s glad he wasn’t.)

      He doesn’t sleep that night. Hasn’t really slept well in he doesn’t know how long. It’s good he’s gotten used to it.

      The wedding is the next day, and it’s a mess.

      There are people running everywhere, phones going off, concerns that musicians will be late, delayed flights coming in, children who cannot find their parents screaming and it’s that last concern that he’s been deployed to look after. He’s standing in the corner feeling like a dressed turkey, tie too tight as the room swims with the heat, surrounded by a conglomeration of baby gates and pieces of cardboard as he watches the toddlers try to kill each other with plastic toys. He gets it, he’s an elementary school principal and once upon a time, yeah, he liked kids, but that doesn’t mean he should get stuck with a bunch of them just because he’s there.

      And he’s there

      For

      Hours

      Watching the chaos rush past him like he’s watching some river during the manic high of a summer thunderstorm, unable to do anything but listen to the screaming around his feet.

      (He wishes the rush would overrun the riverbanks and scatter the brats, let him free, but nobody comes close. He can’t say he blames them.)

      By the time everyone files into the pews his arms from the elbow down are numb and he’s got bite marks up to his knees. The sounds of the organ and the cello echo through the church which is all gothic arches and high ceilings painted white and trimmed with gold, and Jesus is watching him with his sightless alabaster eyes. To say he’s uncomfortable is an understatement. He’s between two old men he doesn’t know who insist on talking to one another around him while behind is a grandmother and one of the little monsters he was looking after who instead of beating him with her hairless Barbie is now kicking the back of his seat as her grandmother whispers soft judgements in that way only Catholic grandmothers can.

      “I wonder how anyone can see around that beautiful hat of hers.”

      “Do you think the food they have at the reception will be better than those delicious appetizers here?”

      “Goodness, doesn’t that man’s hair look…interesting.”

      (He sighs as he hears a giggle and feels another tiny foot connect with the pew.)

      He can see Mike up at the front shaking. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Honestly, it’s probably the most human he’s ever seen Mike, and that makes him smile a bit because good, it’s about fucking time that freakish golden-boy of the Olympians chose to be a mortal, but then the music swells and he turns and-

      Ah.

      Yeah.

      Yeah that explains a lot.

      (He saw her in the picture of course, but pictures rarely do justice.)

      She walks like a Disney princess, with a straight, straight spine and an incandescent smile of straight, straight teeth, all white lace and pearls and glistening chiffon. The woman behind him is sniffling and he sees her retrieve her tissue from underneath her wristwatch strap but out of the corner of his eye he looks at Mike and-

      Yeah.

      Wow.

      Wow he’s…he’s really happy, isn’t he.

      (The envy that bubbles underneath every other nice emotion he can feel in this moment digs at the hole in his chest, like acid in an open wound, and as the two of them recite their own vows, once again he wishes, he wishes, he wishes she were here.)

      The wedding is beautiful, because of course it is. You don’t have ugly weddings between beautiful people. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen.

      The reception is beautiful too, in that Stepford Wives-Good Housekeeping kind of way. The table and chairs are still covered with their white cloths but there are small mud brown buckets the size of a peanut-butter cup with little pink bows and little pink candles in the centre now. There are brown streamers and pink balloons and confetti and even the cake, a three-tiered monstrosity with two little pastry minions on either side, is covered in pink and brown fondant flowers and he doesn’t really understand the obsession with the colour combination but whatever because-

      (It’s not his wedding.)

      There’s a video of Mike and What’s-Her-Face that plays out like a bad graduation idea, all pictures of them as babies and muddy toddlers and kids in sports and summer vacations dripping ice cream and suddenly it’s college and suddenly they’re together and there’s sappy music playing in the background as people ooh and aww. Now it’s pictures of kisses on the cheek and dinners with friends and they’re out camping- when the hell did Mike go camping, he hates camping, he’s always hated camping. Photos at the beach holding hands wearing rings and that’s when the clapping starts, and he goes along with it because who knows, maybe if it was his wedding he’d do something like this, get swept up in the moment like this and enjoy stupid shit such as this awful mistake of a video but-

      (It’s not his wedding.)

      The projector goes away as the music starts up and the DJ is a guy who thinks that he can hear music properly by holding the headphones to the side of his head rather than just putting them on, who likes to change the settings on the little disco rainbow globe sitting on top of the sound system. He’s playing songs that make nearly half the attendees awkward and the other half nostalgic and there are too many people in the center of the room dancing who clearly do not know how to dance but they’re too far gone to care at this point because the bar was open as soon as the first step was taken through the door and maybe that’s a good thing, he thinks, sipping on his long island ice tea, maybe that’s a good thing, because he’s half way through the glass and finally getting over the weird colors and the video so maybe the second half of the glass will help him get over this music that’s not really anything he’d ever have at an event like this but again-

      (It’s not his wedding.) 

      In the far corner of the room he hears a cheer and the bouquet goes flying. It’s this weird bedazzled thing, with brown feathers and pink plastic gemstones and flowers he’s never seen before. Nearly twenty pairs of hands, twenty sets of arms, over two tons of bangles and rings, shoot up into the air to catch it, and it comes so close but the girl that he swears was at least three feet from him is suddenly in front of him and as she catches it, the scream she releases makes him jump and douse his sleeve in his own drink, so it’s back to the bar for another one because it looks like he has to find a different wall to lean on anyway as the girl has now amassed a small crowd including that very Catholic grandmother who under the din he hears mutter,

      “Do find someone before you’re too old to give me grandchildren, won’t you, Virginia? Time’s a-wasting.”

      But he doesn’t think about it and he won’t think about it because-

      (It’s not his wedding.)

       He’s through three and into four long island ice teas and the room is finally starting to feel comfortable. Slumped and smiling, he watches the dancing from the other side of the room now, and it’s the Macarena, and wow, he’s so glad he’s not out there. There’s such chaos and he’s actually laughing because this is some funny shit right here, it really is, and the DJ is doing his best to keep the energy high and the vibe good and he almost goes and falls for it, almost goes and thinks that maybe he could relax and get out there when he catches the middle of a conversation to his left.

      “How long do you think it’ll last?”

      “I don’t know. I mean, they’ve only known each other for about a month?”

      “Little over two months now.”

      “What? That’s still not long enough, in my opinion.”

      “Well, how long does it take to really get to know someone?”

      “I don’t know, longer than two months.”

      "How long was the engagement again?"

      "Half a month at best." 

      “I think she’s just getting married because she wants to have a baby.”

      “You think?”

      “I mean, she’s got to be older than 30.”

      “…Do you think maybe she’s already-?”

      And he turns because he can’t stand it, hissing, “Fuck all, could you not?” and of course now that he lays eyes on them he can see they are that prime species of suburban vulture, all tanning-booth-orange and I-do-pilates-so-I-will-fit-into-this-tight-pastel-lace-dress, and they gape at him as he goes back to the bar. He knows, oh he knows, that when he passes them again the conversation will turn to him, and he can only imagine what they’ll say. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. Maybe he should have just said nothing. He doesn’t get this wedding either, but you know what, he doesn’t have to because-

      (It’s not his wedding.)

      He’s through five and into six long island ice teas and Mike is clearly loving life, which is good, because Mike deserves to be happy. He’s a good guy and it isn’t hard to imagine him living the dream in a brick cape-cod style house with white trim and a white fence, with a little above ground pool in the back and 2.5 kids and a dog, a cat, a parakeet or some other weird cute shit, with rhododendron flanking the little red front door and a small concrete sign that says ‘Welcome’ surrounded by a doe-eyed frog on a lily pad and a rhinestone dragonfly oblivious to the fact that it is about to be swallowed alive.

      It feels good to finally contemplate that without being bitter, so when he goes to the bar for his seventh drink, he tips the bartender with a crumpled fifty dollar bill and thanks him profusely.

      Joseph had it right he thinks, rubbing his free hand hard against the pitted surface of the decorated glass, relishing the numb tingling that slowly makes its way from his hand to his brain.

       Joseph had it so right.

      The lights suddenly go dim, the music slows, the crowd creates a circle and-

      Oh.

      God, but aren’t they beautiful.

      The first dance, coming together for that first dance, first in a thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand he hopes, and he can watch their smiles bloom from his corner if he crane’s his neck and stands on his toes. They move slowly to the music and from the corner of his eye he can see the Catholic grandmother remove the tissue from under her wristwatch band once again to dab at her eyes as the speakers croon,

“I want to know what love is

I want you to show me

I want to feel what love is

I want you to show me”

      Such a stupid song, it is such a stupid song, but he’s crying right along with grandma because this is wonderful, this is gorgeous, this is the most beautiful-

      The lockbox bursts.

      He’s clutching at his chest as though he can fix the hole there, as though he can hold himself together while he’s quietly weeping in his little corner. There are too many thoughts in his head, too many emotions that he cannot put names to, and he can’t seem to bring himself together enough to stop and think so it overwhelms, sucks him down and rips him through.

      He’s so afraid of everything. He’s so afraid, and he hates himself for being so afraid and not knowing how to fix it.

      There’s too much he doesn’t know.

      He’s so afraid, and he’s so terrified he’ll never get a shot at this. He’s afraid he’s going to have an episode one day and never wake up, or worse. What if he were to wake up in a hospital missing a limb or missing an eye? What if he wakes up and is unable to speak, unable to move, fed through a tube they’d stuff down his throat?

      What if he were to spend the rest of his days a vegetable, aware and unable to ask them to please just make it stop?

      He can’t handle even the thought of that.

      There are too many variables to count, too many horrible ways this can end.

      For all the thoughts that have crossed his mind, it’s not that he wants to die, not really. It’s just dying would be easier than having to suffer through this hell of not ever being sure, this purgatory of second-guessing and fuzzy blackness, never knowing if he’s even got a chance to grasp at the dream or if that chance is already long gone.

      Ah, no, he had his chance. He ruined that, remember?

      He doesn’t even need the blackouts to fuck things up, he just does it naturally. 

      He’s such a fuck up.

      God, he’s such a fuck up.

“I want to know what love is

I want you to show me

I want to feel what love is

I want you to show me”

      But he can fix it.

      He’s wiping his eyes on his sleeve when it hits him, sways with the force of the blow as he watches through bleary eyes as the now mister and missus spin around and around in their own little world.

      He can’t fix everything, but he can fix this. He can get the answers to at least one thing.

      But he needs to go home.

      Now.

      He’s out that door, racing to the parking lot and fumbling for his keys and he whispers to himself over and over.

      “Need to go home, need to go home, need to go home.”

      Throwing himself into the car, he slams the keys into the ignition, letting the car come to life as he struggles with the seat belt before taking off down the road. Everything’s fuzzy and everything’s dark and he’s driving over the speed limit so thank goodness nobody’s on the road at this hour because he has to get out of here, has to get back to Piqua, has this insatiable-

      “Need to go home, need to go home, need to go home.”

      About halfway down the highway there’s not another soul in sight and he’s gone, so totally gone. The car is weaving over the lane divider as he screams at the top of his lungs to every love song that plays on the radio while the moon overhead speeds to keep up, while the stars whisper behind their pristinely manicured hands.

“I want to come over

To hell with the consequence

You told me you loved me

That's all I believe

I want to come over

It's a need I can't explain

To see you again

I want to come over.”

      If he drives fast enough he can outrun the doubt and let the high of the booze get him to where he needs to go, because what he’s trying to do is something he would never attempt sober. His heart is thundering as emotion pools and pours from the hole in his chest now so open and raw it feels like it’ll never close again, and if he were sober that would be terrifying, but right now it’s the most liberated he’s felt in what feels like forever.

“I've never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight

I've never seen you shine so bright

I've never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance

They're looking for a little romance, given half a chance

And I have never seen that dress you're wearing

Or the highlights in your hair that catch your eyes

I have been blind.”

      He’s driving with one hand now, beating the other against his thigh in time to the percussion on the radio and even though he’s screamed himself raw he keeps going, keeps crying out the lyrics like he has to, because maybe he does have to. There are moments on this road where it feels like they’re the only thing he’s got left.

“Monday you could fall apart

Tuesday, Wednesday, Break my heart

Thursday doesn’t even start

It’s Friday, I’m in love.

Saturday wait

And Sunday always comes too late

But Friday, never hesitate.”

      It’s not Friday it’s Saturday, but he’s not going to think about it. It’s not Friday, it’s Saturday-

      By the time he sees the thing in the middle of the road it’s too late to slow down, so he swerves.

      There’s a split second where he thinks he’s going to be fine.

      Then the car rolls.

      The passenger windows blow out as the car skids on its side into the median with dirt and glass flying in and

      BANG

      as the car is on its roof and the entire front windshield shatters like it’s candy with another

      BANG

      his arms are in front of him he thinks he’s still screaming he’s not sure he thinks he’s out of his seat he’s not sure and then

      BANG

      as the driver’s windows blow out and he can feel the debris hit him full on and then

      Silence.

      Nothing.

      He can’t breathe.

      He’s shaking, fighting with the seat belt and the passenger door and shaking. By the time he finally crawls his way up and out of the car and scrambles away, there’s vomit dripping from the gaps in his clenched teeth.

      How is he alive?

      He heaves, empties himself on the highway.

      He feels like he’s dying so how is he alive?

      There’s nothing left in him by the time he’s done, gasping for air and unable to stop trembling. The road is silent, not a car in sight, not a person to ask for help. He would be all alone were it not for the moon over two million miles away and the stars at an unfathomable distance, and even if they were closer, it’s not like they could do shit.

      And yet, he feels eyes on him.

      It takes him a moment, blinking through the tears and wiping his mouth on his shoulder, swallowing a few times as his eyes learn to see through the pounding in his head and finally-

      A moose.

      There’s a moose, on the highway.

      Watching him.

      There’s a second where nothing clicks, where it’s just static in his head, and then-

      He’s laughing.

      He’s laughing and crying, beating the grass with his fists as he lets his head fall to the dirt, laughing until he gags and even through the dry heaving he’s giggling because of course.

      Of course.

      How is he not dead yet?

      And why?

      He gets up, slowly, staggering until he can finally stand and even then he’s swaying on his feet, maintaining eye contact with the moose who seems so totally at ease with what’s going on, so he calls out.

      “Fuck you, moose.”

      It’s not the moose’s fault, he hopes the thing knows that. Nah, it’s his fault.

      All his fault.

      He looks back at the car and groans.

      Always his fault.

      He’s still got to get home.

      His feet begin to move of their own accord, toes catching on the deep tears in the soil caused by his skidding tires until he’s right up next to the car. He places two hands on it, gripping at the window frames on the doors where they meet the roof, and he’s not positive about why he’s doing this, he’s not a hundred percent sure he’s making sense because this isn’t going to work, but he

      Pulls up

      And the car

      Lifts

      Until he can push

      And set the car back down

      On its own

      Four

      Wheels.

      He blinks slowly, looking at the wreck glowing faintly in the night, the silver light of the moon hurting his eyes as it softens the sharp edges of everything.

      Right.

      Okay.

      Pushing his luck a little further, he gingerly checks to see if the key is still in the ignition before giving it a ginger twist.

      And the car

      Turns

      On.

      He grins, looking once again to the moose.

      “Fuck you, moose.”

      It’s still not the moose’s fault, but he giggles, even while his hands are shaking as he steers back towards the road, even while he watches the speedometer and makes sure he goes no higher than half the speed limit.

      He’s pushing his luck and he knows it’s going to break soon, but for now…

      For now, he’s got to get home.

      The radio will not turn on, not that he would hear it over the rushing of the wind tearing through the car anyway. He thinks of humming but doesn’t, eyes narrowing as the car fishtails just a little bit, knuckles white against the steering wheel.

      The moon, the stars, and he watch the road in silence for the next hour.

      The city is yellow in the distance, sky orange overhead in that weird way skies are over a metropolis. The light pollution blots out the rest of the heavens until only the moon is left, and he can feel it judge him as he pulls up to Edith’s apartment complex, whispering to the rest of the sky his every movement.

      He’s insane, he realizes that now.

      The buzz has worn down to a dull throb in his head, and he can feel the doubt racing along the road to catch up, so he stumbles for the door which isn’t open per say, but rather, comes off at the hinges when he goes to see if it is unlocked and he just goes with it, races up three flights of stairs two at a time, and the next thing he knows he’s right outside.

      He’s so close.

      When he pushes the doorbell, he can hear the ringing on the other side.

       There’s a pause, a moment, a span of maybe half a minute where he can feel himself starting to cave, can feel himself starting to give up and give in and turn around to go and pretend he was never here, that he was never this brave, but then-

      The door opens. Edith is right there.

      She’s right there.

      He’s home.

      And he’s kissing her.

      He’s kissing her, all teeth and tongue and desperation, all bleeding heart and shaking bones, one hand holding the side of her face while the other wraps around her waist and he’s clinging for dear life as he mouths prayers into her skin, bequeathing his devotion, begging to be understood. He’s swaying, buckling at the knees, rolling back on his feet and then rolling into her with a sigh as he lets the wave take him, lets go as he is pulled into her riptide, as though she were an ocean in which he wishes to rest forever, because she is, she is. She is the most beautiful. Let him rest here.

      When she pulls back, there’s a smacking sound of lips unlocking, and he giggles.

      “Ben! What the-”

      From the inside of his eyelids he can see her hall light go on, and she screams.

      He cringes, her shriek ringing in his ears as he blinks away the spots in front of his eyes underneath the bright lights of the entryway. There is another panicked noise, and there is another cringe as her hand lands gently on the side of face his face while her words pour out in a rush.

      “Oh my god, oh my god is that glass? How are you still standing?”

      He mumbles something that isn’t even words as he turns to kiss her wrist, only to have her pull away.

      “No, Ben, what- are you drunk? Oh my god. Oh, follow me. We’ve got to get that out and then clean you up. I don’t even know how you made it up the stairs.”

      He’s lead to her bathroom, and another light is turned on, and as he’s once again blinking in the brightness he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and that’s…

      That’s a lot of blood.

      He falls against the wall and Edith yells, rushing him with bandages from the closet, reaching him just as he vomits into the sink. He can feel her hand on his back, can hear her making shushing noises above him, whispering soft comforts he cannot make out, and once again he is back to being

      Disgusting.

      Good to be in familiar territory.

      She makes him rinse his mouth out when he’s done, and after she instructs him to sit on the edge of the toilet seat, from the corner of the eye he catches her chugging the listerine and it hits him-

      “I kissed you with my barf mouth!”

      It comes out as a wail, and she splutters, spraying the mirror before spitting into the sink and she’s laughing, clutching the edge of the vanity and laughing in hysterics. Maybe he should take that as a good sign, but he doesn’t, because things are not okay.

      “I am so- I am so sorry!”

      “It’s fine.”

      “It’sssnot fine!”

      “Of all the things, Benjamin, that is not the priority right now.”

      “But-!”

      “Enough,” Edith stands, wiping her face with her hands, folding them, letting them rest against the edge of her profile as she takes a deep breath, “Enough. You want to make it up to me? Just sit there. Sit there, don’t move, and be quiet. Okay?”

      His mouth closes with a snap and he sits.

      There’s something boarding tenderness in her face as she approaches him, picking up the dropped tweezers and ointment and odd bent boxes of bandages. She lifts his face gently at the chin, and he knows she’s only doing it to see better, but he feels a chill run through him as he stares at her while she carefully plucks glass out of the side of his face. He winces every time the tweezers make contact but he can’t bring himself to look away.

      “Your eyes,” he mumbles around her thumb, “look like fireworks. Have I ever told you that?”

      And he can see them readjust as she finally looks at him, see the pupils shift to bring him into focus, pulling at the iris and making the colors catch the light to dance in fantastic shades of blue. There’s a twitch in the corner of her mouth and even when she looks away, from this angle, he can see the blush creeping from her chest up her neck like the slow rush of water under sand.

      “I thought I told you to stay quiet,” is the only response he gets.

      So he stays quiet.

      Long after he’s been thoroughly bandaged from his face all the way down his arms, long after he’s exchanged his shirt for one of her oversized nighties, long after he’s sat down on the old pullout couch in her living room, he stays quiet.

      Hello Kitty band-aids pull on the skin around his knuckles as he slowly clenches and unclenches his hands.

      He’s dangerously close to sobriety now, and the weight of reality is sinking in.

      Edith is in the kitchen at the stove top, making eggs at what the clock claims is 4am, and he’s watching her, watching the steam curl around her face so set in stone and he knows maybe he shouldn’t, he probably shouldn’t, he definitely shouldn’t, but with the last bit of courage he has, he moves to stand behind and, slowly, wraps his arms around her.

      There’s a moment where she stiffens, but then, a sigh.

      Gently, her hand comes to rest on top of his own clasped ones and he allows himself to sink his face into the crook of her neck, allows himself to breathe as he whispers,

      “I am so sorry.”

      With one hand, Edith flips the eggs. With the other, she holds his own hands tighter as her thumb passes over his bandaged knuckles while she mutters,

      “I know.”

      Together in silence, they watch the eggs sizzle on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took me so long to finish, but I think you guys can see why.  
> Huge shout out to tiniestofthesams for being my beta reader. Normally I just check over the chapters myself but I wanted a second set of eyes on this one.  
> God...where to start?
> 
> There was this really cute comic by thepinkestpug about Captain slipping through Krupp while Krupp is singing to the radio and I just- I don't know if it inspired this scene or not but I LOVE IT so HERE IT IS http://thepinkestpug.tumblr.com/post/161355889472/sloppy-comic-about-underroos-leaking-into-bennys
> 
> There's a couple of different songs referenced in here:
> 
> I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner (I'm sure you've all heard it- it's in almost every 80's/90's romantic whatever and you know, maybe that's why I can't stand it.)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raNGeq3_DtM
> 
> I Want To Come Over by Melissa Etheridge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckt0TuK0qv0
> 
> Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt2YIpZWBqA
> 
> Friday I'm In Love by The Cure- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa2nLEhUcZ0
> 
> I sometimes listen to music when I'm trying to write. Some of you have been asking me about songs and stuff so here they are, my 'It's midnight and I can't think of how to phrase this' playlist for this chapter.
> 
> Never Let Me Go by Florence and the Machine- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNKbeV3wM84&list=PLK38oLgEEhvC9rwMr1PrS95gG5ZvpeBSy&index=1
> 
> Looking Too Closely by Fink - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Zb_4ZOM7M&list=PLK38oLgEEhvC9rwMr1PrS95gG5ZvpeBSy&index=2
> 
> Loosing My Mind by Mystery Skulls- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5TpNmS4OX0&list=PLK38oLgEEhvC9rwMr1PrS95gG5ZvpeBSy&index=4
> 
> Sandusky Ohio is a real place (as I'm going to guess at least a quarter of you know) but what you MIGHT NOT KNOW is that there is a "gentleman's club" called Teahouse of the Dancing Lady. It's basically the place these guys go to and...oh my god, you have to read the google reviews, you have to. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tea+House+of+the+Dancing+Lady/@41.4356582,-82.7419813,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x883a48a1679c2897:0x39a3bf87c67333ce!8m2!3d41.4356582!4d-82.7397926?hl=en
> 
>  
> 
> (If you can take the time to do so, PLEASE check out other songs by Etheridge and De Burgh. They're...so good. So good.)
> 
> As an aside, I just wanted to say thank you all so very much for your words of encouragement. I don't often get a lot of feedback on my stuff but in the past couple of weeks I've just had an in pouring of messages and I just... It means a lot.  
> Like, a lot a lot.  
> You guys inspired me to start working on my own story again, the thing I've been needling since college and wish to get published.  
> So...crossing all fingers... here we go <3


	9. Chapter 9

       He wakes up to her voice.

       It makes its way through his dreamless sleeping slowly, like water seeping into dry dirt, like candlelight, and he doesn’t even know what she’s saying at first but it doesn’t matter because never, not ever in his life, did he think he’d be lucky enough to wake up to this. He’s overwhelmed by the comforting knowledge that she’s here, that she exists. In this moment, all is right in the world.

       The headache and reality hits just as he hears her say, “Yeah, he’ll be fine, but I would still really appreciate it if you could cover for him Monday.”

       Shit.

       Shit shit shit.

       (Nevermind. All is not right in the world. Hope’s canceled everyone, time to go home.)

       He tries to sit up, one hand over his eyes to blot out the afternoon sun and the other slipping against the weathered sheet she threw over the pullout sofa, but before he has a chance her hand is on his chest. There’s fire in her eyes, the lines in her face set in stone, and even while he can faintly hear Calvin speaking over the receiver as she gives him a face that clearly says, ‘Stay’.

       He sinks back into the mattress as far as it will take him, until her fingertips are just brushing his chest, and he can’t quite figure out how to breathe until she moves away.

       (It’s in this moment he remembers he’s wearing one of her night shirts. He’s not sure how he feels about that.)

       The rest of the phone conversation is short, polite, but she’s pacing back and forth with the cord twisted around her finger. He watches her ping-pong from one corner to the next, footsteps overlapping each other, her voice carrying with it a lightness that her face doesn’t have, only to turn around after she’s hung up to dial a different number and, in a voice so totally different from the one she just used,

       “Hey, it’s Edith. I just wanted to let you know I won’t be able to come in on Monday. Yeah- yeah no, I’m alright. I just- I have,” she coughs, directly into the receiver, “just- ugh, I don’t even know. I don’t know if it’s allergies or a cold or what but I feel like I’m dying here,” and she bullshits her way through another phone call, the lie blatant on her face but if he didn’t see her, if he couldn’t watch her bitten nails tapping on the countertop, he would never have guessed.(He wonders if that’s awful of him, wonders if maybe he’s done more harm than he previously realized, and the panic settles in.)

       She closes her eyes as she hangs up the phone, leaning her forehead against a cabinet as she takes deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. Her hands are fists on the countertop and he’s overwhelmed with the need to bring her out of whatever’s going on in her head even if he doesn’t know what to say, so what finally comes out of his mouth is,

       “I’ll have to remember you can do that the next time you try to call off.”

       (His voice is so raw he almost doesn’t recognize it.)

       And he can already tell he’s made a mistake. The look she sends him confirms that, but it also says she’s too tired to fight, so the bite he’s expecting in her words never comes when she asks,

       “The door downstairs, was that open when you came in last night?”

       “I…uh,” he blinks, thinking back, thinking back, “I don’t think so. For some reason, I think it was broken.”

       She sighs before turning her back to him and fiddling with the coffee maker. There is another lengthy pause, filled with nothing but the gurgling and running of water, and his mind is slowly starting to wind back up and once again he is afraid. He’s trying to piece together last night, but it’s all chunks and bits that don’t quite match, odd curling tails of conversation. He knows how he got here and he knows why he came but he doesn’t know- he doesn’t know if- The car, he had flipped the car, just about totalled it, but somehow he was still able to get- how was he able to get the car back up and- it was still parked outside wasn’t it, oh god.

       He remembers the door just opening, he remembers running up the stairs, he remembers kissing her, remembers holding here there in the doorway not five steps from him and his face goes red with the memory, but he also remembers her screaming and the fear turns to terror and he’s not sure- he’s not sure-

       “Here.”

       Edith holds out a glass of water, and when he takes it, she opens her palm a bit more to reveal an aleve. In her other hand, she keeps her coffee in a death-grip.

       “Take this, and drink all of it.”

       So he does, but he’s watching her over the rim of his glass as she watches him over the edge of a mug in the shape of Snoopy’s head. He’s taking small sips, trying to settle his stomach which is in knots, and he remembers running from the wedding and…shit, he’s got to call Mike, try to explain. And the insurance company. And he needs to make sure It is okay. And there is so much that is overwhelming in this instance but the most terrifying thing is sitting there watching her, watching her watch him, and not knowing what happened, so he starts with,

       “I’m sorry.”

       And all he gets in reply is,

       “I know.”

       And it clicks with him that they had that exchange before, standing at the stove top, his arms around her, and he looks at his knuckles then and takes in the Hello Kitty bandages which, in the light of day, look a lot less cute and a little more…bloody.

       “I don’t want to touch them,” she says, quietly, and he looks up, “I don’t know if you need stitches.”

       “It’ll be-”

       “Don’t,” for a split second, he thinks she’s going to chuck her mug at him, but instead she sets it down on the counter, hands shaking, “Don’t. Just don’t. If I hear the words ‘It’ll be fine’ come out of your mouth one more time I swear to god Ben I’ll-”

       But she doesn’t say what she will do, she just runs her hands through her hair, grabs it in two fistfuls and just holds them at her temples, eyes screwed shut until she finally breathes out and runs her hands down her face. She looks so tired. She looks so tired and it’s his fault, he knows it.

       “I-,” there’s a tightness in his chest as he moves towards the edge of the mattress, “I should probably go-”

       She shakes her head, hands turning skywards, “Oh no, you’re staying here.”

       “But-!”

       “No buts. None. If I can’t- if you- No, you’re staying here.”

       “There are things I need to take care of at home,” he slowly stands, swaying on his feet, “I have to call about the car, and Mike, and-”

       “You can call from here.”

       “Edith, the paperwork is at home.”

       “Then-,” she throws an arm out, “Then just-call whoever else you need to first. I’ll go down and get your stuff out of the glove box, if it’s still there. Call a tow truck when you’re done and we’ll take the bus across the bridge, alright? But you’re not going anywhere without me being there!”

       The slam of the door behind her resonates in the small space, filling his head even as he goes and calls the towing company, mincing words and parsing phrases while he tries to untangle her face and understand what she’s thinking. On the phone, he pretends he is fine when Mike asks, pretends that he somehow received a call about things that needed to be attended to at home, and though he knows Mike knows he’s lying, he is grateful when there are no more questions put to him. (He doesn’t think he could handle it if Mike asked, because he doesn’t know, he really doesn’t know anymore.)

       By the time he hands up, she’s back, paperwork in one hand and a fresh clothes in the other.

       (The pants are his from the night before, he recognizes that. They’ve been fixed, jagged lines where they had been cut fixed and looking more like Frankenstein’s monster than anything else, but you couldn’t say they weren’t fixed. The shirt, however, is hers. They both smell of her fabric softener. He holds them it in his hands in the bathroom, pressed against his face as he marvels at what a lucky asshole he is.)

       The tow truck is outside when they come down the stairs, and he pays the man in cash with a tip that kindly asks ‘Please don’t ask me,’ which the man obliges.

       They don’t speak on the bus, and nobody speaks to them, but he can feel the eyes on him as he’s going back over again and again everything Edith has ever said to him. Was there a moment he missed something? Has he made her this upset before? What did he do to do that, and what did he do last night? Is she going to leave?

       ...Is she going to leave?

       He finds himself clenching his pant legs in his fists, trying to calmly rationalize that, if she did decide to never speak to him again, it would probably be better. He’s been a mess, an absolute mess, it would be much better for her if she left but oh, he is selfish. He doesn’t want her to go even when he knows she probably should, and he wants to apologize but he doesn’t know how so he’s most likely only pushing her away even more. Fuck. Fuck- what’s he suppose to do now? He wants to ask her but he doesn’t even know how to phrase what he’s thinking and he’s worried if he did what kind of answer he would get so he just sits and stews with what feels like all the world’s eyes upon him and doesn’t bother to fight her when she pulls him off at the hospital because he’s not sure how much more he can take sitting there in silence.

       In the urgi center, it’s loud. There are cracks in the green tile work that run across the floor, up the wall, bends in the drop-down ceiling brown with water damage and the whole pace smells like antiseptic and rubber gloves. He watches Edith quietly brush the dust off a fake plant they’re sitting next to as a child vomits in front of him across the plastic of the couch they are sitting on with their mother, and the poor woman just sighs and mops up the mess knowing it’s only going to happen again. She eyes the bandages, he looks at the way the kid’s shoes are duct-taped, and neither of them speak a word, but he’s got several different thoughts running through his mind, the loudest being the demand for her to, ‘Just stop staring, just stop. You have a sick kid in your lap, how about you look at that. Just stop staring at me,’ but he doesn’t.

       He doesn’t say anything.

       When they’re called into a separate room and the doctor asks what happened to him, Edith finally speaks.

       “He was putting in a new window and it fell on him.”

       The doctor looks up at them, brow full of curling, greying eyebrows drawn tight as he quietly judges the validity of Edith’s words, before penning it down. After a few other inquiries, he leaves, and the room is silent. There is no talking, no contact, and his brain is running on overdrive trying to remember, trying to remember.

       He had knocked.

       She then answered the door.

       He had kissed her.

       …She screamed.

       Why did she scream?

       What did he do?

       He’s afraid to ask, but he needs to know, he needs to know what he did because he wants to fix it, but when he is just about to open his mouth the nurse walks in with platinum blond hair and a smile too big for her face to inform him he’ll be getting stitches.

       He’s about to panic when he feels Edith move behind him and rest her hands on his shoulders. As her fingers sink into the spaces around his bones, he can picture her behind him, ramrod straight with that hellfire face she gave him this morning, and suddenly, even as the nurse keeps talking about things he does not understand, even as she threads the needle, he feels safe.

       She stays with him, unmoving, for all forty eight stitches.

       Forty

       Eight

       Stitches.

       That’s what the nurse says when she ties the last knot, insisting that he shouldn’t bend over too far or clench his fists even while he’s white-knuckling the armchair and Edith has a death grip on him, her thumbs moving across his shoulder blades. He’s sure she can tell how terrified he is, sure she can feel the way he twitches every time the nurse so much as touches him, but still, she does not move. Thank god. Thank god, because his whole skin is prickling and he doesn’t want to know what his face looks like and he’s genuinely terrified of everything at this point. What is he even going to say on Monday? (Tuesday- Edith called Calvin and made him cover Tuesday. Oh jeeze, he really is a lucky bastard.)

       He has no idea why she’s doing this, and he has no idea how he’s going to make it up to her.

       (The only thing he knows is that he probably doesn’t deserve it.)

       He feels like he’s going to have a heart attack if he stays in this chair any longer

       But the bus ride home is just as torturous. They’re sitting side to side without touching once again, without looking at one another. Where Edith’s hands had been on his shoulders has now gone cold and taut and he can feel the stitches catching on the underside of the shirt just as much as he can feel the eyes of the other passengers on him and he just wants to reach out and- and- he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he wants to take her hand in his or wants to punch the man across from him, who from the corner of his eye he sees is looking between the two of them with a face somewhere close to the range of disgust, because that man doesn’t know shit, so it would be nice if he kept his face and his business to himself. (God damn it he just wants to get out, he just wants to get out. Just wants to pull the blinds down and never leave that house again.)

       When they finally get off, it’s another three block walk in silence. He still can’t muster up the courage to look at her.

       He fumbles with the keys when they arrive at his front door, aware of the fact he’s never been here with her when she’s been inside, and he’s not sure how he feels about that. He’s not sure how he feels about unlocking the door and letting her in with him right there, right there to see her face and see how she moves about the place, how she flicks a light switch or twists a tap, and he feels like he’s about to keel over when Edith puts her hand atop his and stops him.

       “Wait, you don’t ring the doorbell first?”

       He feels like he can’t breathe for a second, because between the pain of the stitches across his hands and the sudden contact of her skin against his, it feels like he’s short circuiting, “What?”

       “The doorbell.”

       “What about it?”

       “I thought you rang it before you entered.”

       “Why would I do that?”

       “Because of It?”

       “What?”

       She sighs, not letting go of his hand until she’s rang the doorbell. For a split second he’s not sure of what to do, not sure if he should proceed, but when he finally does manage to get the door unlocked he sees It has sat himself just across the threshold, looking up with a face that clearly says, ‘feed me’.

       “Oh.”

       “You’ve never done that?” her tone is almost incredulous, and he doesn’t fail to notice the critical gaze she’s giving him.

       “No. I uh- I haven’t.”

       “Oh.”

       She’s the one looking awkwardly away now, and he’s left feeling like he’s done something wrong again.

       (There’s so much he feels he needs to apologize for, but he doesn’t even know where to start and he doesn’t know what all of it is, so it just settles into his bones and creeps.)

       He lets her in first, and when It tangles himself around her ankles and she bends down to pet him, there’s a lump in his throat that he can’t seem to get rid of.

       (The moment feels wonderfully domestic and horribly out of place all at once, and it’s just a bit much to take in.)

       “Do you- Can I get you something to drink?” He says this looking out of the window, looking at the dust on the television, looking at everything and anything but her.

       “Coffee would be nice.”

       “Right, right-okay,”

       Fleeing to the kitchen, he sets fills a mug with water and puts it into the microwave while getting the instant coffee down from a shelf, hands shaking because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know what his next move is. He has to call the insurance company but he feels like he needs to make sure she’s okay first so he runs through lines in his head, trying and trying to find the right words to say to fill the need for conversation, but there isn’t anything he can come up with that feels right. The microwave dings, and he puts two spoonfuls of coffee mix in, but he doesn’t know if she wants sugar or sweetener and he’s got a couple of packets of both labeled with different names from different coffee shops around town and when he pops his head back into the living room to ask,

       “What do you take with-,”

       He finds he can’t breathe.

       Edith’s curled up in his armchair, It against her chest and she’s petting him, cooing softly about how he’s such a good boy, such a pretty boy, and he knows that, doesn’t he? She’s got her shoes off and her knees tucked up underneath her and he can hear It purring from the doorway and with the beginnings of a sunset just behind her it looks like she has a halo, like she’s some patron saint of cats and lost causes, and he can’t- he can’t-

       She looks up at him.

       “What?”

       He’s not sure what kind of noise he made, but when he can finally register her look of confusion, he asks, voice tight, “What do you take with your coffee?”

       “Oh…uh, sugar.”

       He ducks back away without saying anything, grabbing her mug and as many sugar packets as he can find, taking a deep breath before he brings them back out to her. As soon as he sets them down on the table, he’s back in the kitchen, riffling through papers in the bottom drawer of the telephone stand and trying to remember how to act like a normal person again, (because he has to make this call, he has to fix this, he has to be normal for at least fifteen minutes and pretend like everything is fine.)

       The whole encounter with the insurance company is a train wreck. The man on the other end can’t hear him, he keeps transposing the numbers, and when Edith slips past him in her bare feet to add milk to her coffee, he completely misses the claim number the guy is trying to give him in favor of panicking about her still being in his house because holy shit she’s still in his house. And hours later still, she’s still in his house. He watches her busy herself with making another cup of coffee as It follows her, curls about her ankles and leaps up onto the countertop, watches her sip and pet and pet and sip and with her back turned to him like that he can pretend for a second she’s not angry with him, that this is normal. He can pretend that this is a normal occurrence and that he isn’t black and blue and stitched all over, pretend that when he hangs up she’ll turn around and ask how it went as though it were the most natural thing, as though she’s always been here and will always stay and wow he needs to get a grip and fast, because this guy on the phone keeps mumbling numbers and he needs to focus, needs to focus, because that beautiful world in his head isn’t real.

       (He can’t focus.)

       The sky is dark by the time he hangs up.

       After filling the cat food dish again because the damn thing doesn’t know how to pace himself and ate through the four cans that were left, he walks back into the living room to find Edith in the chair, gently dosing with It on her lap. The television is on with the news talking about how nobody has been able to find Captain Underpants since the chemical plant explosion, and is he okay? Is he alright? Where has he gone? He finds himself standing next to the lounger, leaning against it as he watches police officers and civilians being interviewed while he pointedly avoids making eye contact with the cat until, finally, It decides to leave of his own volition and quietly make his way into the kitchen.

       There is a moment where he shuts his eyes, listening to her breathing, to the recording on the news, to It munching away in the other room, and once again he is struck by the notion that this all feels so right, so natural, and something seems to settle in him.

       He wishes this gentleness was real, that it was real and had always been real, had always been his. He wishes he could open his eyes and magically just be fixed. He could be normal, someone who always knew what to say and how to set issues right. Things would be so different. He wonders what kind of person he would be if life was that good. Probably softer. Probably kinder. Probably a lot…less…him.

       (He thinks of that brick cape-cod style house, with the white picket fence and the white mailbox, the dream he pictures Mike living, and cannot imagine himself there.)  

       “What do you think?”

       He blinks and is back in the now, with Edith looking up at him, the glow of the television playing against her face.

       It takes him a minute to process, “What?”

       “About him,” she points to the picture of the Captain on the screen, “What do you think about him?”

       He watches as the picture changes, as a news caster holds a microphone up to the chief of police, who talks about the ‘underwear menace’ who is a ‘public indecency and a shame to the city,’ who ‘needs to get a real job and leave these things to the professionals,’ and can’t hold back a snort.

       “If you’re asking me if I agree with that guy, no.”

       “So…you like Captain Underpants?”

       “I think he’s trying,” he sighs, shifting, “I think he’s doing the best he can.”

       “…What makes you assume that?”

       “Well, you don’t go running into a chemical fire for fun.”

       “Do you think he was even needed though?”

       “I guess, yeah. I mean, even the fire chief admitted his department couldn’t have gotten everyone out on their own.”

       “But…but maybe someone else could have gone.”

       “Who?” he looks at her again, “Nobody else was brave enough or stupid enough to try. I know I sure as hell wouldn’t have walked in there.”

       She looks at him astounded, wide eyed and opened mouthed, before bursting into laughter and he has no clue as to why, but so long as she’s laughing then everything’s okay, right? Because she’s resting her head against his hand on the top of the lounger and smiling up at him and he doesn’t have it in him to tell her he can feel the movements pulling at the stitches because this is the calmest he has seen her all day and he just wants her to be happy, he just wants her to be okay, so he laughs too even if he doesn’t get the joke and pretends for the moment that all is right in the world.

       The laughter dies down but the smiles stay, and he can believe life is good until she asks, “You doing okay?”

       “Yeah. You?”

       “Yeah.”

       “…Do you need me to take you home?”

       “No,” she shakes her head, face set, “I told you, you’re not going anywhere without me.”

       “Edith, at this point, I don’t want to go anywhere but to bed.”

       The implications of his words hit him after they’re out of his mouth, and he can feel the colour in his face rise as he watches the blush creep up from Edith’s neck, so he quickly adds, “I’m just- I’m just really tired, that- I mean- I-,”

       “Oh, yeah.”

       “Yeah.”

       “Mhm.”

       “So I’ll just- I’ll go.”

       “Okay.”

       “And get washed.”

       “Nurse said to keep the stitches dry for 48 hours.”

       “I’ll take a sponge bath.”

       “Kay.”

       “Right.”

       “Kay.”

       And he doesn’t even bother to reply anymore because he is out of that room so fast it takes his breath away.

       In the bathroom with the lights off and his back to the door, he goes to drag a hand down his face until he remembers he probably shouldn’t so he just gently beats the door frame with his fist berating himself because wow, way to talk without thinking, way to just open your mouth and be a dumbass. Go you. She was comfortable until you ruined it. Moron.

       He’s cursing under his breath as he tries to detangle himself from her shirt, growling at his own idiocy, so distracted by his own embarrassment that he doesn’t think before he turns the light on.

       And oh-

       Oh.

       He’s…

       (Mess isn’t strong enough of a word. Neither is wreck though. He’s at a loss of what to even call this.)

       Those little black stitches, sticking up like needles, prickle across half his face and across his forehead, through one eyebrow. They’re sprinkled through his chest in clutches of twos and fours and a couple of sixes across the top of his stomach, He had seen his hands, had seen his arms, had assumed the worst but this was far worse still, and he can feel the bile rising in his throat as he looks at himself in the mirror because this? This is what she’s been dealing with since last night? This is the face she had to look into when he all but accidentally asked her to- asked- fuck.         

       Forty eight stitches.

       Forty.

       Eight.

       Stitches.

       And more scrapes and bruises and scabbed over blisters than he can muster the energy to count.

       (What’s a few more scars to the rest of him? What’s a few more bits of patchwork and lines?)

       He can’t even blame this on an episode. This was all him. This was purely him, in the flesh, conscious of every action. He remembers everything.

       Except after she screamed.

       …What happened after she screamed?

       …What did he do?

       (His hands shake the entire time he’s trying to navigate the damp towel around sensitive skin, as though he’s working his way around barbed wire.)

       When he makes his way back to the living room, all ratty pajamas and high blood pressure, he does his absolute best not to look at her when he says,

       “There’s an extra towel if you need to take a shower.”

       “Oh…oh, uh,” and just from the tone in Edith’s voice he can tell she’s not looking at him either, “I- thanks.”

       “There’s fresh sheets on the bed too. I put them on before I left so you don’t…have to worry about that.”

       “Fresh-? Ben-”

       He doesn’t want to argue about this, he really doesn’t, so he holds up a hand, “You’re not sleeping in the chair.”  

       “But-”

       “You’re not. Sleeping. In. The chair. You’re- you’re not. End of discussion. Not happening. Just- take the bed.”

       There is no reply save for the sigh that comes after a moment of silence accompanied by the sound of her gently brushing past him and down the hall. As soon as he hears the bathroom door close, he slumps against the wall, eyes finally navigating to the lounger just as It jumps up onto the seat, curling once about himself before setting those large eyes on him smugly.

       “Brat,” he mumbles, and the cat preens.

       Moving into the kitchen, he makes a cup of coffee, because if he isn’t going to sleep he might as well not suffer through the night trying, and he’s about halfway done making the cup when he hears the water turn on

       And his brain

       Short circuits

       Because it’s only decided to click with him now, just now, the specifics of what is happening. He walked into her apartment at o’dark-thirty at night, just about forced himself on her, and then he turns around and tells her ‘oh yeah, yeah, feel free to strip down naked in my shower and then sleep in my bed. It’s fine.’ Holy shit. He puts the mug down because he’s afraid he’ll drop it but he can’t stop the shaking as he grips the sink. He’s such an idiot. Jesus, he is such an idiot and an asshole and a selfish fuck.

       The water going through the pipes feels so loud.

       (He only has bar soap. What is she even going to clean herself with?)

       (He doesn’t want to imagine he doesn’t want to imagine he doesn’t want to imagine brain stop it.)

       (Fuck.)

       He drinks his coffee in one go, not breathing, hoping he can either burn the images from his brain or choke.

       (Neither happens, unfortunately, but the second time he tries it with a different mug with a different image in his head, he gags midway through and winds up hacking into the sink which, he supposes, is at least something.)

       How is he ever going to apologize?

       When he hears the bathroom door open, he waits with baited breath, unsure, but her footsteps move away from him and further down the hall, to his bedroom.

       The door closes, and once again, he returns to being a mess.

       (Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it.)

       She shouldn’t forgive him, and he’s not even sure she has, but she at the very least trusts him and really at this point he wishes she didn’t, because he doesn’t even trust himself.

       (What is she even wearing? He didn’t leave clothes out for her.)

       …

       (He didn’t leave clothes out for her.)

       That’s it.

       He walks outside into the back yard, lets his feet sink into the dry grass, lets his lungs fill with that humid air, lets the sound of the cars on the distant highway fill his head because what is in there currently he wishes wasn’t. This is a lot to take in. There’s always been too much to take in these past several months but right now in particular it’s a lot more than he can handle. He wonders if a drink might be a good idea but trashes it, wonders if a cigarette would be wise and realizes he hasn’t bummed a smoke in over twenty years, thinks about another cup of coffee and comes to the rationalization that if he drinks any more caffeine he’ll probably die of a heart attack and maybe that’s an idea for later but not right now, not with her in his house.

       In his bed.

       (Stop thinking about it.)

       “Ben?”

       He can pinpoint the moment his blood freezes when he looks at her and sees she’s wearing one of his undershirts and a spare set of pajama pants .

       (She had to go looking for those.)

       (How long did she look for those?)

       (How is she so beautiful? How is that even possible?)

       (What else did she find?)

       (Does she hate him yet?)

       “Ben, are you okay?”

       Is he okay. He’s the one that just waltzed into her world and wrecked it and she’s the one asking if he’s okay.

       Honesty has never been his strong suit, but he can’t stand lying right now. He watches as Edith’s expression subtly changes and he can’t read the shifting tectonics of her face so he blurts, “What did I do to you last night?”

       A blank. She goes blank. The terror rises further still.   

       “Do to- You didn’t do anything.”

       He’s trying to get the words out but all he can do is open and shut his mouth, over and over, over and over and over because his whole body is rejecting the notion that he needs to be clear, needs to be transparent with what is going on in his head. It skirts the edge of physical pain, as though he is peeling some off phantom skin instead of just talking. Finally, with a voice hoarse from fear, he finally manages to whisper, “I kissed you and you screamed. That’s all I remember.”

       “Oh... oh no, you didn’t- I swear to you, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

       He can see the recognition, see the click when it finally makes sense to her, and her whole demeanor changes.

       And yet.

       “But...what did I do?”

       She’s laughing quietly, face breaking with ease as that blush comes creeping back up from her chest.

       (He can see it coming up from beneath the collar. The collar of his undershirt. That’s his shirt.)

       “I didn’t panic because you kissed me Ben, I panicked because I was worried about you. I turned on the light and realized you-...you were kind of a mess.”

       (Oh thank god he didn’t hurt her thank god he didn’t hurt her he’d never forgive himself if she said no and he didn’t stop.)

       “But it was like you didn’t even realize you were bleeding. You kept trying to- to uh- well you didn’t want to stop-”

       (The whole of him seizes.)

       “But it was- it was sweet. I promise you didn’t- as soon as you knew I wasn’t having any of it, you stopped.”

       (Thank. God.)

       “And, oh my god, you- you realized you still had vomit in your mouth when you- and,” Edith laughs again, “You panicked, and I swear I have never heard you scream so loudly, but at the top of your lungs you just went, ‘I kissed you with my barf mouth,’ and honest to god Ben it was the funniest thing.”

       (Actually that was horrifying to him, but so long as she was okay.)

       “You uh, you- yeah. I got you cleaned up after that, made sure you had something in you. That was it.”

       “...You’re lying.”

       She sighs.

       He tenses.

       “Um,” she’s not looking at him, she’s looking at the grass, at the fence, at the sky, and as he watches her eyes move to every point but his, he wishes she would just look at him, “Wow, you were, ha, you were so gone. You- said I had eyes that looked like fireworks.”

       “...Did I finally say that?”

       Ah, and there she looks at him, and he feels himself lose his breath all over again.

       “Yeah.”

       “...Well that’s- that’s nice to know,” he swallows, steels himself, because he doesn’t want her to think that was just a drunken thing, that he didn’t mean it, “Because they do. Look like- like fireworks, I mean.They’re very- very nice. Nice eyes. Very.”

       He could hit himself, just beat his face against a fence post, but Edith smiles a little, crows feet crinkling as her eyes catch the streetlamps and sparkle, and he calms himself down enough to think that maybe, maybe this isn’t going to end badly. When she takes his hand in hers, he can feel the blood pounding in his ears, feel his whole heart shudder in his chest along with his knees along with his breath as he tries to breathe in, breathe in, take this moment as she’s running her thumb along the back of his hand like she did just last night and it’s so comforting to think this can go well.

       “I just worry about you,” the words fall from her mouth softly, like a leaf out of a tree, like it’s an accident, “I- what if something happens to you one day and it can’t be fixed? You scared the hell out of me, you know that? Showing up at my door? What would have happened if you never made it? Just- you need help. I don’t know what’s going on, but you need help, do you understand? You-...You’re-” she takes a deep breath, “You’re my best friend, Ben, and I want you to be okay.”  

       Best friend.

       The high he was on keeps going, keeps sailing strong, but he finds himself dizzy, almost nauseous, at the sudden left turn he didn’t see coming.

       Best friend.

       The blush that had been growing further up her neck has now spread across her cheeks, reached her nose and bloomed amongst all her summer freckles, and though he cannot see it, he knows it has gone across her shoulders and settles there too, settled amongst the other moles and sunspots and tan lines from those summer dresses she loves . The fact that he knows this, just knows on instinct, terrifies him a bit.

       (He’s never going to get this moment out of his head, is he. No matter the fact that this is over before it even started, he’s never going to be able to unsee this, and he realizes, quietly, that he’s glad. He doesn't’ want to forget.)

       (He wanted her to leave anyway. This is better. This is one of the better ways this could have gone.)

       “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he lies, the taste that first kiss in his mouth as he smiles, “It’ll work out, I promise. It’ll be fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Throws self off cliff)
> 
>  
> 
> I promise it works out, I do, but I have to make him suffer for it first.
> 
> ALSO- fun fact- the average amount of stitches given to an inch/centimeter is 4.5. That's roundabout how I got the number of stitches he needed (However, that average is for nice straight lines.) 
> 
>  
> 
> I know where I want the Egg Casserole Thread to go but I'm blissfully blank about a lot of other things. Any and all suggestions are welcome! 
> 
> Also, heads up, my work schedule is going to get absolutely crazy so updates will slow. I have no plans on simply stopping, but do not expect as frequent postings of work. 
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Also, thanks to THESE PEOPLE for Betaing the work and once again saving my stupid ass.
> 
> Crispcomet  
> Anostalgicplaceforme  
> Tiniestofthesams  
> Vizivoir
> 
> (My spelling is garbage)


	10. Chapter 10

       He loves her.

       It’s alright to admit that now, after everything. In fact, it’s hard to figure why it took so long to get to this point. Looking back, he doesn’t think he ever saw her as anything but perpetually happy, and he wonders how he could have let himself assume that. Maybe he wasn’t looking hard enough in her face, in her words, in the tapping of her fingertips. How wrapped up was he in his own head that he neglected to notice the fact that she...maybe there were days where she needed him. Maybe she needed to be steady and he failed to hold her still. Maybe she needed to break down and he just didn’t let her. 

       She deserves to be deserved. Her friendship is solid and sturdy and sometimes the realist thing he has to hold on to, so he counts his blessings that he has that, but as she leaves him there standing at the bus stop watching her walk back to her apartment, he allows himself to accept the truth.

       He loves her.

       And it’s over.

       (It would almost be possible to believe what he feels is relief were it not for the heartache.)

       There’s work to be done though, so rather than dwelling, he throws himself into his office and works, and works, and works, because there are lesson plans that need to be cleared and materials that need to be found and everyone gets their paperwork in at the last second and so he is buried in a jungle of documentation and folders and requests for that which he cannot give. Pencils are always high on the list, but this year there’s also a demand for more desks because where the classrooms could once seat twenty comfortably, now they have to seat upwards of thirty, and now the complaints are coming in, but there’s nothing he can do about it because if he doesn’t have the money to turn a closet into a classroom then damn it he doesn’t have the money. There’s nothing in the budget, not now, with the repairs to the cafeteria ceiling still being made while a burly woman in a construction-orange vest tells him they’ll have to actually fix their air conditioning system because there’s mold starting to grow, and he’s not sure what to do anymore, but what’s it matter? Just keep signing, just keep begging the school board, just keep writing grants and hoping they get approved. There’s not enough hours in the day so if he stays longer than he used to, what’s it matter? What’s it matter anyway, it’s not like there’s anyone he has to see.

       Not anymore.

       Because it’s over.

       (He knew it was coming. He knew it was coming so he can’t be upset, right? The shock just isn’t there.)

       The nights are full of newscasters talking in the other room as he scoops catfood out of a tin while It curls about his ankles, watching him with a stare only a cat can have. He refuses to make eye contact and instead listens to the worry over bird flu, listens to the panic over tropical storms testing the waters off the coast of Florida, listens to the recap of the royal shenanigans, and it gets him out of his skin for a little while, even if that means he’s stepping into everyone else’s chaos. There’s so much shit going on he doesn’t even know where to start processing it so it just slides over him, through him, slowly, so the next day when Tara asks him if he’s up to date on Camilla he can smile and nod because well, that’s what you do when everything is alright. You smile and you nod and you care.

       (Or you pretend to care, because the numbness is settling in and everything seems to be turning into comfortable textures of grey.)

       He doesn’t listen to love songs anymore.

       He doesn’t listen to much radio at all anymore, actually.

       The car rides to and from work are committed in silence. There’s already so much white noise in his head he can’t fit anything else in, because all the voices from the long hours of the night still curl around his brain, whispering things he knows aren’t real and muttering in low tones he does not always understand. He swears he hears Joseph sometimes. It’s almost like he’s there, wherever he goes now, it’s almost like he’s talking to him, telling him things he can’t translate, but that’s ridiculous. It’s the lack of sleep, it’s the worry of everything, it’s the- it’s the lack of sleep it’s just the lack of sleep, he swears, so he’s glad the blank is overtaking him, because he doesn’t think he’d be able to handle this alone.

       Is this like what Joseph went through?

       No. No Joseph had been married, with kids. Joseph had something before it was all lost.

       Joseph had something real. All he ever had was a dream, but he doesn’t want to think about it too much.

       He doesn’t want to think about anything too much.

       He doesn’t want to think.

       So he lets the numbness take him.

       (And it’s comfortable, and it’s nice, and he can make it through so long as he doesn’t have to be fully there to do it.)

       And it feels good to go back to basics, to forget the rest of how life could have been and focus on the now, and the now is this, with George and Harold sitting across from his desk with something akin to fear in their eyes under a thick veil of bravado as he chews them out for once again having no sense of respect for authority or property. They watch him as he paces, as he flails and rails and tells them he will call their parents, because-

       “You think you’re so funny, but do you realize the level of destruction you have caused in this school? Rolling chalkboards down the stairwell is under no circumstances acceptable behavior!”

       But they say nothing. There is no banter back and forth, there are no digs to get under his skin, there is just silence, slick and cold, and he feels their eyes pick at the scabs and at the stitches and that only fuels the fire higher, so he keeps yelling until he can’t breathe without his lungs burning.

       (He thinks Harold looks back at him in the doorway, and he’s not sure why, but the boy almost looks apologetic.)

       There’s a static in his head and a hollowness in his chest, but for some reason that stick with him. It’s on his mind still when Mike calls, and he answers the phone with as much fake aplomb as he’s physically capable of, which isn’t much, but it’s enough. Mike talks about what’s-her-face and how they recently got back from their week-

       (It’s been a week. It feels like forever. How can forever fit into seven days?)

       -long honeymoon on whatever-island-in-the-Pacific and the phone call is all about tropical flowers and sand, the smell of salt air and sunrises and sunsets. It sounds like paradise. Meanwhile he’s here in the threshold between his kitchen and his living room staring at the woodwork of the doorframe nodding alone muttering inconsequential ‘that’s nice’s and ‘wow’s until about an hour in the conversation turns.

       “Did you hear about what happened?”

       “What?”

       “Oh my god that’s right, you’re not on Myspace. Dude, Clark died.”

       “Who?”

       “Clark Penicoff.”

       And he doesn’t feel anything.

       He doesn’t feel anything at all. He hasn’t even thought of Clark since they graduated. He only knew him because they were in the same ELL class, and outside of the few stories he heard, that was it. Is he supposed to feel something? He vaguely remembers his face, only has a hint of an idea of what his voice sounded like, and is it horrible of him, not to care? Is it wrong?

       “Oh…oh christ.”

       “Yeah. Apparently it was a car accident.”

       And so the conversation goes on, as Mike talks about how Clark was ‘really something else’ and how he remembers different interactions with the guy, and who knows if any of the stuff Mike says is real anyway, but what’s it matter? What’s it really matter? It could have been him, and what then? What would Mike have said over the phone, over his dead body, to some other person in their major who didn’t really know him? ‘Oh yeah he was something else, you know?’ when the reality of the situation would be he was never something else, he was always just him, but Mike will be Mike and as much as he loves the guy there’s a certain level of bullshit he’s just not willing to take right now.

       (The numbness is into his bones now.)

       He doesn’t register people are staring anymore, doesn’t register much period. If he could have felt anything, it would have been surprise when Jacob asks him about the stitches, and he has to touch them to remember that they’re there, and for a split second he feels like telling the truth, feels the grey lift and wants to explain how he feels like he’s barely staying together, losing control, but rather than losing composure he just says-

       “Car accident.”

       “Jesus.”

       “I’m fine. You should have seen the other guy.”

       And Jacob chuckles with a clap to the shoulder, and he grits his teeth, and rather than focusing on the pain, hopes that it’s impossible to feel the rest of the stitches through his shirt.

       “Thank goodness it wasn’t worse.”

       “Hm.”

       “Well, if you need anything just let me know, okay? I’ve got a friend who works in insurance. I’m sure if you’ve got questions, she could answer them.”

       For a split second he feels something, something, something almost painfully like- he’s not sure, but it’s gone and it doesn’t matter.

       “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

       “Anytime, Ben.”

       (He wants to believe Jacob even if he can’t, so he smiles.)

       Every once in awhile he can catch It waiting by the door, sitting there and staring, as if she’ll come through, as if she’ll come back, and he doesn’t have the heart to pull him away but he also can’t stand to see it so he finds himself hiding in the kitchen most nights, picking at cereal or reheated leftovers while he listens to the television in the other room talking about hurricane season and how the Floridians are preparing themselves and he wonders if maybe he should batten down the hatches because when this grey breaks it’s going to be a mess, but he doesn’t have the energy, so he just waits for the storm to hit him.

       It’s not even like she really left, though she could have, though she should have, though she had every right to. He feels like this whole thing could have been avoided if he wasn’t so god awful stupid.

       He feels like a lot of this could have been avoided if he wasn’t so god awful stupid.

       (She is the most beautiful. Full stop. Nothing else. She is the most beautiful and never in a million years could he deserve her.)

       They still talk. Over lunches held in tight grips as they stand in the corner of the cafeteria watching the students pick at school sloppy joes and green beans. They swap small stories and jokes, she asks about It, he asks about the neighbor below her apartment, and it’s fine, it’s really fine. This is good. This is where they were before. It’s just when her hair falls in her face, he’s suddenly struck by the notion that he cannot brush it behind her ear, not that he ever did, but that now he never will.

       “You doing okay with the reduced staff?” he says instead, swallowing the lump in his throat.

       “Oh yeah, couldn’t ah  _ bean _ a better lunch.”

       “Isn’t that joke a bit  _ green _ for someone as professional with punning as you?”

       “Are you accusing me of being  _ sloppy  _ with my wordplay?”

       “Never,” he grins.

       And it’s fine.

       It’s really fine.

       (He doesn’t want to do any more damage than he already has, so if he’s lying, give him time. A lie can become a reality if given the time.)

       The nights grow longer still, plagued by snippets of conversation replayed in voices just out of earshot. He’s finally been able to get some sleep but even then, it’s full of slips of faces, eyes looking past him. He swears he sees Joseph. He wonders if that round face in the dark corner is Clark. He’s not sure why they’re suddenly on his mind but they won’t leave, taking up what small open space there is between the numbness and the nothing to sit crouched like vultures. In one dream so vivid, he’s back in college, back in his old skin and his old varsity jacket and that patchy excuse for a beard, crossing the quad as he follows the two of them to class only to turn through the doorway and-

       “Hello.”

       The Captain waves from the back of the room, too big for the tiny folding desk he’s sitting in. For a moment, he wants to leave, but for some reason he doesn’t, or he can’t, he’s not sure. Instead, he takes the seat at the opposite end of the space, watching, waiting.

       The sunlight filtering in through the windows fills the silence between.

       “…So, you’re not going to say anything.”

       It’s stated as a fact, not a question, and even though he doesn’t understand the context, he grunts and shrugs his shoulders.

       “You should.”

       “Shut up.”

       “Why?”

       “Because I’m telling you to,” he can’t look at the Captain, can’t get himself to even look up from the tile, so he just snarls with his chin tucked and his shoulders hunched.

       “She has a right to know, you know,” his voice is so quiet, but it carries, “though I think she’s figured it out by now.”

       “Yeah? Well whatever it is, maybe that’s why she left.”

       A huff, “She didn’t leave.”

       “It feels like it!”

       “Nobody’s leaving.”

       “Then maybe they should!” his fist hits the chair behind him and it crumbles, twisting into an ugly thing, and he yells as he pulls back.

       The Captain seemed to almost sag, “Well, if anyone does, it’ll be because of that.”

       The quiet fills the space again as what had once been a desk slowly turned to muck, dripping onto the floor, spreading in a great black puddle. It doesn’t catch the sunlight, but rather, seems to eat it, just as it seems to slowly be eating everything else in its wake.

       “What’s happening?” it’s impossible to keep the tremor from his voice.

       “What do you think?”

       “Don’t play games with me! What’s happening?”

       But the Captain doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, watching as the room slowly starts to fill. The light from the windows is dying and the sludge is slowly building. Rushing to the door he tries to open it, but it won’t budge, he bangs and he pulls but it does not budge.

       “Help me!” he screams at the Captain, but the Captain shakes his head.

       “You have to help yourself on this one.”

       “How!”

       “I don’t know,” it’s so soft, but he can hear the crack in his voice as it carries across the room, “I don’t know how.”   

       The black, it rises off the floor, it eats away at the chair, the wall, the window, slowly crawling over the Captain’s skin. There is no fighting it. Nothing is consumed by the nothing. Dark is consumed by the dark.

       And with that, the hero is eaten alive.

       He’s aware of his bellow only from how his throat burns, but he cannot hear it.

       He’s aware only of the fact that he’s running because he’s moving, but cannot feel it.

       He’s aware he’s tearing at the dark because he can see it, nothing else, nothing else.

       It’s like he’s not there.

       But he keeps clawing at the pitch and rolling, because the world needs a hero. Everything is too dark, and too scary, and too out of control, and maybe it’s way past the time where it could be saved, but he doesn’t want to give up yet, so he keep digging, and screaming, and hoping, keeps hoping.

       Keeps hoping.

       Because if there’s no hope for this world, what shot does he have?

       When the dark finally pulls back and his fingers are scraping the tiles, his hands have shrunk. The skin is soft, cushioned by baby fat and mother’s cooking, giving a stark contrast to the sickly black encrusting his fingernails, painting his arms up to the elbows, painting his legs, painting his face.

       It’s with those little hands he finds the cape, tattered and stained, without its protector.

       The air rushes into his lungs as he sits up, tears on his cheek and It on his chest, hand over his mouth, terrified, unsure. There are so many thoughts in his head and so many voices, so many snippets of the dream racing through his thoughts; it feels like his skull could burst any moment. The room is so quiet but his brain is so loud. He takes his face in his hands and breathes, breathes in and out and in again as the nightmare slips from his mind like sand, until there is nothing left, until, in the dark of the room, he slowly sinks back into the numb.     

       And it’ll be fine.

       A lie can become reality when given the time.

       It will be fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking of going back and tinkering with the previous chapters, not to change the plot, but to just smooth out some formating things and rework some phrases. The style change between the first two chapters and the rest is really bugging me and I've tried to let it go but... I can't *laugh*  
> I'm also going to, as I said, be updating this a bit more slowly. I don't want to outrun the movie and, between this and other projects, not to mention my job, I'm going to be taking my time. I will still be doing oneshots, and I'd like to FINALLY get around to adding more to 'Getting to Know You' which will consist of interactions between Edith and Captain (should line up with It's Hard nice enough) aaaand yeah. Fun times. *two thumbs up* 
> 
> Bird Flu was becoming a real concern around the end of summer in 2005. It's still a really huge issue now. Many countries, including China and Canada, have banned poultry imports from the US. It is partially because of this that there was a focus on the chicken industry and how it treats not only meat, but livestock. Huge push to get animals off of antibiotics and to be more free-roaming. Few have adopted these ideals and those that have are too expensive for most people to purchase. As such, the problems are still very much relevant.   
> http://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/H5N1_avian_influenza_update.pdf  
> https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/business/timeline-of-bird-flu-outbreak.html 
> 
> Charles, Prince of Wales, married Camilla in April of 2005. Needless to say, nobody was happy. Nobody is happy with it still. I can't blame any of them.   
> Here's the information about the wedding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_of_Charles,_Prince_of_Wales,_and_Camilla_Parker_Bowles#Questioning_a_royal_civil_wedding  
> Here's information about Princess Diana, beloved by many. This article should also help you guys figure out why everyone just about hates Charles and Camilla by this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana,_Princess_of_Wales 
> 
> Hurricane Katrina hits the 23rd of August of that year too, and is on record as one of the five deadliest hurricanes to ever hit US soil. Not sure...if I want to work that in yet, but I figured I'd put that tidbit of information here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina 
> 
> Got news of a couple of deaths in recent days. Not anyone I knew, or anyone I knew well, but I think that kidna influenced this chapter...
> 
> College and Kid Benny were inspired by the art of Cindork (who still needs to upload it so I will put that link here at such a time that they do <3 Because you guys should really see it) 
> 
> Writing that Void Depression (tm) feeling was...a lot harder than expected. That was a fun challenge. 
> 
> This really took the stuffing out of me. 
> 
> Cheers!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nothing always seems to stretch for eternity until, suddenly, it doesn’t.

      The nothing always seems to stretch for eternity until, suddenly, it doesn’t.

      He’s left standing on the other side of the emptiness at his office desk in the near-dark of dusk staring at the opposite wall wondering what took so long, because suddenly, in the still of the school, every piece that seemed to jam and stall in his brain is now in overdrive. It feels like he’s vibrating, like his skin is trying to peel itself off his bones, and the more he sits there the more it gets to the point of overwhelming-

      But he’s feeling.

      And it’s been… a while.

      It’s almost new, very nearly foreign, and he’s been through this rodeo before- he knows how it goes- but still- He’s suddenly aware of the texture of the pencil in his grip and the way his fingertips stick to the cheap yellow paint, how the fabric of his pants cling to the back of his legs with that particular sweaty kind of itch, how the tie around his neck is tight- too tight- too tight- and his hands are shaking as he rips it off, wondering what he’s doing here still after everyone has already up and gone.

      What hour is it?

      God, what hour even _ is _ it?  

      And there’s so much he’s fallen behind on, so much he has to do, and he’s been trying to do it, but how good can your work be if you’re not really there? If you can’t actually can’t bring yourself to give a shit about what you’re doing, how good is anything you’ve done?

      Shit.

      He grabs a stack of files and from the lock drawer of his desk and tells the clock to fuck off. He’s not going anywhere. He’s not going  _ anywhere _ . He’s lost so much time.

      (Fuck fuck fuck fuck- why is he like this? Why is he always like this?)

      And suddenly it’s done, and he’s gone through the folders, the schedule, the grant essays, the supply requests all over again- all over again because he can’t trust what he done. He has to double back and double check everything- everything- God forbid something slip. He’s fine now, really, he swears it, he’ll keep swearing he’s fine and this time he’ll mean it, he thinks, every time he signs his name, he swears he’s better than he’s been in months. He’s answered every single email from the PTO and the school board and the angry parents and it’s 9 o’clock and holy shit they’re here- they’re here and he never gave the announcements, changed his clothes. He never even took a shower. He didn’t-

      (Fuck fuck fuck fuck-why is he like this?)

      He digs through the supply closet looking for lysol and his emergency suit jacket, never mind that the air freshener is from two Decembers ago, never mind that the jacket still has that hole in its’ lining from when the tiger got loose in the school.

      Maintain composure.

      Coming back from those downward spirals feels like being dumped out the airlock of a ship sailing too close to a black hole, and no matter how many times he’s had to go through this he’s never gotten used to it, but here he is, and everyone will realize he’s booking it as fast as he can to catch up to their timeline again so he’s really gotta focus now and stay in this office and just don’t- just don’t- just keep going. That’s always the key- just keep going until everything stops spinning. -

      (Had it ever been this bad though? He can’t remember, and he doesn’t want to.)

      Maintain composure

      It’s almost like a panic, the thing that overwhelms him, but closer to exultation, because holy shit it feels good to feel something again.

      How long had he been in that waking sleep, dumb and sobbing like some angsty teenager? He had gone through that phase, that was over. He’s in his forties, god damn it, and late forties at that- he’s an adult. Suck it up and Suffer through. What kind of asinine moron had he been, wallowing in his own bullshit like that? (Fuck- crying is for children. He isn’t a child. He shouldn’t be crying. He shouldn’t be-)

      How many nights had he stayed awake?

      What day was it again?

      Fuck.

      (Has breathing always felt this weird? Because it feels weird.)

      Maintain composure.

      And yet-

      And yet-

      It’s almost good.

      But- not quite

      But-

      (Wow, but he thought once he’d never have to do this again.)

      He grabs the remains of a newspaper from the shelves behind his desk and flips through, scanning articles and looking for something- anything- that might grip his attention enough to calm him down, because he just needs a moment, just a few seconds really, and he’ll be okay enough, he’s sure- just okay enough to pass mustard so that when he finally has to face what’s outside of that door-

      And there’s Captain Underpants staring up at him, with an article that reads, “Piqua’s Superman Stops Chlorine Disaster” and a subtitle of, “Claims he was Trying to get Cheeseburger from Shoe Store.”

      And there’s a moment where he smiles, and he means it, though it’s all grit and grinding teeth, because he remembers the relief he felt, even during the terror, that things were going to be okay. He remembers that long night and the long nights after, remembered watching every newscast and telling himself that if the Captain was okay, then he’ll be okay. If the Captain can handle it, he can handle it. If that freak can make due with chaos, so could he, so he holds onto that now, because he needs it- he needs to know he can handle this-

      He shuts the paper.

      (He’s not going to do that to himself)

      Because he can’t.

      This is on him. He’s not a hero- he’s not anything close to a hero, and he doesn’t need a hero right now, he just needs to get a fucking grip. 

      He pulls the paper apart at the seam, still smiling that smile of grit and grinding teeth, because he can’t do this. He’s tethered himself to the breaking news flashes of a madman long enough, and look where it got him? All that happened was he fell for believing in a bunch of hot air and hocus pocus. What did it matter, anyway, that a nutjob with superpowers is real? He’s still just him.

      He has to handle this his way.

      His hands are shaking, shaking, and when he goes to throw the paper into the trash, it completely misses.

      He’s climbing the walls on the inside of his skull and he’s about to start climbing the walls of the room if he doesn’t get the hell out so he goes against every single voice in his head and leaves his office because at this point he can’t  _ not  _ leave his office, leaves to walk up and down the halls over and over listening to snatches of conversation from the lessons inside. It’s like doing laps, an elongated orbit circling that black hole, a form of that pacing he’d long since ruined his carpet with at home these past couple months.  His fingers are twitching, and he’s got the hiccups, but he keeps walking and hoping that maybe if he gets this out of his system now he can go back to being normal.

      No heroes.

      No villains.

      No news.

      No politics.

      No falling into panic, or falling to pieces, or falling out of reality-

      (No delusions of grandeur.)

      (No more heroes- no more- he can’t take it.) 

      Nothing.

      Just him and this hallway. Just him and this hallway, this orbit, this skirting the vibrating edge. Just one foot in front of the next in front of the next in front of the-

      He doesn’t realize how long he’s been walking until the lunch bell rings and he has to duck into the faculty bathroom to avoid being seen.

      (To avoid being asked why he’s not in the lunchroom.)

      (He’s not going to do that to himself.)

      As he makes sure nobody can see yesterday’s shirt under today’s blazer, he takes a deep breath of that cinnamon scented lysol and just hopes that everything will be okay for once, really, actually okay for once in a long while, and there’s a part of him that says he’ll never want for anything else again so long as things are okay right now, but he knows he’s lying. He’ll still want for things to be better than this, or to be different than this, but right now he swears all he wants is this to just stay as is and stay put and for the world to stop spinning for five seconds so he can actually and officially be okay.

      From memory, it takes about a week for things to finally settle down, but this feels so much worse than last time.

      (When was last time?)

      When was the last time it had ever gotten so bad? He can’t remember. He can’t remember and he’s not sure if that’s good or bad. It was before that stupid Captain-

      (No heroes.)

      But as the hours bleed to days and the days bleed together, he’s back in his stride, his world revolving around It and work and work and It and nothing much else and that’s perfect. Clean slate. Clean house. Clean state of mind. Back to basics.

      Good.

      It’s going to be good.

      Not good yet- but getting there.

      And he reminds himself of that as It curls around his ankles at the kitchen sink, waiting for the wet cat food, the good shit, at 3am, because he can’t sleep so of course the cat can’t sleep and they both end up wide awake watching the BBC morning broadcast with the blue light from the television casting strange and flickering shadows around the room.  

      And he reminds himself of that looking back on the days, only remembering snippets of being in the faculty room putting paychecks into mailboxes, or hunched over his desk furiously typing something- something- he doesn’t remember anymore. He’s losing so much sleep. Part of him feels like he should be concerned, but he’s not. This is how it goes- this is always how it goes, he knows. It’ll be over soon, and then back to normal (and he swears that’s all he wants right now, to just go back to normal.)

      And he reminds himself of that again, later, sitting in his car and letting the heat slowly build as the sun reflects off the dashboard and blinds him, soaking in the warmth that is so close to comforting, listening to the news on the radio. Good old news, good old boring news, full of things he can hate and grind his teeth over and that’s good, that’s really good- and he’s listening to the guy on the radio talking about how even if they do develop a cure for cancer, it’s not going to matter, because-

      “If we were able to get our hands on something like that, major pharmaceuticals would snatch it up in an instant. All those people out there waiting for a miracle? It’s never going to come unless we change the way we address healthcare in our society. No matter how hard we work and how much we donate, all progress would be gone in a-”

 

_              *snap* _

 

      Where is he?

      (Fuck fuck fuck fuck-)

      Where is he?

      It looks like the boy’s bathroom on the second floor in the west wing, and he makes that guess based on the graffiti of himself squatting to shit on the side of the stall door- the same graffiti that he’s asked the janitors to clean up since last year to no avail- but there’s blackness outside the window and the only light seems to be coming from the emergency lights that are bleeding into the dark room because someone is holding open the door and-

      It’s George.

      And Harold.

      And he’s in his underwear.

      (Fuck fuck FUCK FUCK-)

      “What happened.”

      “Sir, it’s no big deal, we just-“ It’s George talking, and he doesn’t want George talking because George is good with words and can wheedle his way around just about anything and he can’t- he can’t- he just wants to know-

      “What…Happened.”

      And he looks at Harold.

      (He doesn’t want to know but he needs to know. He doesn’t want to know but he needs to know. He doesn’t want to know but he needs to know.)

      (And he is once again afraid because oh god, they look so afraid.)

      “You were sleepwalking, sir,” the kid’s voice is so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it, “That- that’s all.”

      “…Just sleepwalking.”

     “Yes,” whispers Harold, while George in the background backs him up with, “Promise! We just saw you go back into the school and-”

      He never wanted this to happen again. He never wanted this- he never wanted this- and their voices are saying that so much more happened than just him sleep walking and he wants to know, but he knows that if he presses them for answers it’ll only make it worse so he can’t- he can’t- but he has so many questions. What were they doing on school grounds after school? How did they even get into the school? Why are they here in this bathroom with him? Why aren’t their parents looking for them? Are their parents looking for them? Why-

      “Why am I soaking wet?”

      “W-w-water,” Harold points to the running tap next to him, something that had gone unnoticed in his panic, “Thought- thought it would snap you out of it.”

      “…Where are my clothes.”   

      George jerks his thumb over his shoulder, “They’re in the hall.”

      There’s a moment of silence, where he doesn’t trust himself to speak and, apparently, the boys don’t either, but when he finally nods and goes to leave- because he has to leave oh god he has to get out of there-

      “Sir?”

      George’s voice is so small. There’s no bravado, or panic, just- fear, so he turns to face the fear on the little boy’s face.

      “Are you okay?”

      And that’s when it hits him, standing there in the doorway to the hall, exactly what they’re afraid of.

      The scars.

      The scars, thrown into relief by the stark contrast of yellow fluorescence and the pitch of the bathroom, make him look like a monster. Jagged and dark, spotchy and pail, up and down the whole of him, across the whole of him- he’s mapped them all out now but still- those shiny blue-beetle bruises have all scuttled off and gone but in their wake they left- they left-

      Nothing.

      It’s like there’s nothing left of him. 

      He lifts an arm, looking at it bare in the light, the ridges and valleys where the skin didn’t heal quite right, where he should have taken better care and didn’t- couldn’t- wouldn’t- He should have tried harder to stop this.

      He should have tried harder in general.  

      (He’s just glad that the burns have healed over for the most part. They could have made this so much worse.)

      “I’m doing fine,” he mutters, and, after ruffling George’s hair, grabs his folded clothes from the floor and leaves.

      He doesn’t know what made him do it, reach out and bestow affection like that. He rationalizes that the boy was terrified- he needed to do something- the kid is so small and was so afraid- but he’s a goddamn grown man in his underwear who looks like he should have been cast as Frankenstein’s Monster. There were fifty thousand other things he could have done.             
      (Why does he never think? Why does he never think?)

      The next day, boys don’t talk about it, so he doesn’t talk about it, and that’s fine.

      That’s really fine.

      But he still schedules an appointment with his doctor, because he can’t do this again.

      If what he’s doing is sleepwalking, then the way to rectify it should be clear. It should be a clean-cut and done. It should be fine- he can make it fine.

      (He’ll make this fine.) 

      So he sits in the waiting room one Tuesday after school in those plastic, creaking chairs, listening to the news with half an ear as he scans the covers of the magazines and coffee table books.

      And he sees the same old newspaper of the Captain.

      (He thinks of all those nights, all those nights awake and waiting for some sign, for some reason to hope and believe that things could be better.) 

      And he looks away.

      (He’s not going to do that to himself.) 

      When the news doesn’t hold him, when he can’t bring himself to push the newspaper aside, he instead looks at the plastic plants, noticing the dust atop their leaves with a smirk.

      (He thinks of how Edith would have tried to brush it off.)

      And looks away.

      (He’s not going to do that to himself.)

      (His skin is crawling he wants out he wants out this was a bad idea let him go home he can go home please just let him get out of here please just let him go he can’t do this-) 

      He’s glad the nurse finally calls him back, because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last in those stupid squeaking chairs.

      And the nurse tells him his BMI is high, and that his blood pressure is high, and that his cholesterol levels are high, and that he needs to get himself in order or, and here the man leans forward, “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

      And he rolls his eyes, “Why do you think I’m here?”

      (It’s back to the stroke or the heart attack, and though he knows it, he’s not going to let this fucking nincompoop in teddy bear scrubs beat him lying down.)

      And the nurse leaves in a huff, shutting the door behind himself a little harder than he needed, so all there is now is the still chill of the examination room. There’s a horrifically detailed anatomical poster on the other side of the wall making eyes at him, laying open it’s chest, it’s ribs, until the only thing that seems to be intact is the heart, frozen upon the page, and the print still stares down at him with those lidless eyes and that lipless smile, and all he wants to do is look away but he can’t. He traces the arteries to the brain, the veins to the heart, and wonders which one of them will collapse on him. Which is the one that’s going to cave in and leave him sprawled out on his dirty carpet at home with nobody but It to watch him struggle to breathe until, finally, he stops.

      He wants to look away but can’t.

      (He wants to be a different person but can’t.)

      And then the door opens.

      “Mr. Krupp,” the doctor says, without looking up from the documentation in his hands.

      “Dr. Tox.”

      And it’s a solid fifteen minutes of question and answer and answer and question, humming and hawing over charts and old test results.

      “Did you change your diet?”

      “Did you see the psychiatrist?”

      No, and no, and couldn’t he just be written a prescription for some sleep medication, please?

      “Have the blackouts come back?”

      “Have you had trouble sleeping?”

      Yes, and yes, and please, really, couldn’t he just write the damn prescription? They both know he was going to anyway.

      “Do you know what happens when you blackout?”

      “Do you remember what you do during the nights you cannot sleep?”

      No, and no, and please, just please, he just wants to get out. He just wants to go home.

      He just wants to rest and not worry for once.

      (He hates this man he hates this pace he hates that poster hanging starting from the far wall watching and watching with those lidless eyes like it knows what’s coming but won’t tell him please just let him get what he wants and go home- please.)

      But fifteen minutes of hell come and go and he leaves clutching a prescription which, in another thirty minutes, is filled out at the Rite Aide.

      He sleeps that night, and does not dream.

      Nor does he dream the next night.

      And that is good.

      (The night passes like a blink, like all he’s done is shut his eyes for a moment. It’s disorienting, but he’s not having those dreams, and he’s not blacking out, and that’s all that matters, right? That means he’s fixed it. That means he’s fine.) 

      His hands still tremble though

      That doesn’t go away until he picks up smoking again.

      And he hasn’t done that in ages- the last time he picked up a cigarette was, what, college? Years ago, decades, in fact. It feels like another lifetime. Yet still, on a long walk that took him out of suburbia and over the footbridge into the city one some moonless Thursday, he finds himself in front of a corner store smoke shop and goes in.

      Because why not.

      And leaves with a pack of the rattiest cigs he can find.

      Because why not.

      He forgot what it was like to have that burn in his lungs as he breathes in, breathing out, breathes in again, feeling a bit like he did back in college and the world was his oyster and a bit like when he was ten and roaring into the cold New Jersey January pretending to be Smaug. He’s not a dragon, and the world is not an oyster, but on the even longer walk home, between the pools of waxy, flickering street lights, he feels the smoke curl about his chest and push out the last remnants of tingling that didn’t seem to realize that the eviction notice had already been served and it was time to move on.

      After a few more days of that, the shaking in his hands stops

      (And he’ll rationalize that, clearly, the cigs worked, so what’s the harm in going back for another pack? Better than the drink- he’s not doing that again.)

      He had stopped years ago because he was worried it was gonna kill him, but now? To hell with it now- he feels invincible. Back in his own step, back in his own groove- he sheds the past few months like a bad dream, all dead skin cells to be scrubbed off until he’s raw and winded and feeling alive. And there is almost a high, almost, sort of, maybe? But more in regards to the staggering and terrifying tall kind of height than any sort of emotional high. It’s like feeling how strong the wind is whipping around, and looking down, down to recognize just how far there is to fall, but holy shit the terror is worth it in that moment, standing at the precipice after what felt like an eternity of languishing in the crag below. It feels like every bone in his body is shaking, like every neuron in his brain is firing, like every atom of him dying to crawl off and fly away, and he’s just- he’s just left there- left there at the top of the mountain with his new skin wanting to scream his lungs out because at least he’s not at the bottom.

      (It’s the closest thing to feeling good he’s had in what feels like forever.)

      And still the nights go on, and the medicine works. He doesn’t dream anymore. That’s good.

      So it’s day after night and then day after night and things slowly fall back into place, and that’s good- that’s what he wanted. He’s getting his prowl back, making sure he clicks his heels against the tile so that the students scatter before he rounds the corner and that’s good, that’s good he can get back into the swing of that, that he still holds that kind of control (because for a while- for a long while- he was really worried- he was- he was really- )

      (Don’t think about it.)

      It’s comfortable to be behind that desk now, finally, after so long. It feels good to lean his forearms against it like he used to as he stares into the soul of the kid on the other side, as he snarls into the phone. He’s moving about the space and using it like it’s his own, and it is, really, but it hasn’t felt like that in a long time. It’s felt stuffy and callous and alien but this- this is now- it’s better. It’s almost like slipping into a pair of old shoes, the kind that know the bends of the road and feel so comfortable to walk in again because it’s familiar, and familiar is good. (Familiar is safe and he just wants to be safe- he just wants to be okay- he just wants to-)

      (Maintain composure.)

      He still has to wear the long sleeves, but he’s doing okay, really, he’s doing okay.

      (He’ll make himself be okay.) 

      “Hey.”

      But he doesn’t feel ready when she finally approaches him in the cafeteria, even though he finally felt brave enough to brave the cafeteria, and he waits for the feeling, that want to be sucked into the ground, to be blown off his feet and out of existence. He was doing so well, but now she’s looking at him and he’s waiting for that feeling to come.

      And it doesn’t come.

      “Hey,” he says, and when he smiles, he means it.

      “How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in this neck of the woods in a while.”

      “I’m doing well,” and it’s not a lie, it’s truly not a lie even if it feels like he’s stretching the truth a bit, but it slips so easily from his mouth he can believe it, “Doing really well. You?”

      “Uh, I’m good.”

      “Nice to hear.”

      “…Ben-?” she coughs, seeming to hesitate, then, “have you been smoking?”

      “…Yes?”

      Her face, it doesn’t crumple, but it comes close, and there’s something in him that feels like guilt, though he tells himself it has no room to rent.

      “Oh… um, when did that start?”

      “Two weeks ago, I think,” and though he smiles, he looks away, out the window, “Old habit- don’t know why I picked it up again.”  

      “Ah.”

      And that’s that. She says nothing else. He can practically hear the gears turning in her head from where he’s standing, but he’s not going to look- he’s not going to do that to himself.

      But he can’t stay here either.

      “Well-,” he says, looking at the ceiling, the smile starting to hurt his face, “Well, better get back.”

      “Oh, yeah.”

      “See you-”

      “Ben, wait-“

      But the bell rings, and he’s gone, out the cafeteria and down the hall- away from his office- towards the back door. In the safety of the janitorial exit, underneath the overhang and the no-smoking sign, he leans against a rusting handrail and lights one up. He takes a drag, letting the smoke curl in his lungs and he holds it there until he can’t, until the burn overwhelms him and he has to let go, only to take another hoping against hope that by the time he finishes this cigarette, the nicotine will kick in and he can go in without shaking hands, not lie if someone asks if he’s fine.

      Because he’s fine.

      He’s okay.

      He’s going to finally be okay.

      (He’ll make himself okay.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah I've waited for this.  
> This is as far as I'm gonna go until the Netflix series comes out (and yeah, if you haven't heard the good news, we're getting a Netflix series). I don't want to outpace the story, so though I have an outline of things I wish to add, I'm going to hold off until I know exactally what's going on.  
> I've got a couple of other CU works amongst other things in my archive, and I'm going to still be writing for the fandom as a whole, so hopefully, that'll tie you guys over. 
> 
> Special thanks to Kyoo, Micaxiii, Launturnforest, and Cindork. I asked them all to look over it thinking that maybe one or two might and they all did and I cried? I- listen, people who are willing to beta my work to sooth my anxious self and tell me where the mistakes are after I've glossed over them fifty million times are people I greatly appreciate, so- thanks guys <3 
> 
> Thanks for being patient- I know this hiatus was...longer than planed. Hit that void depression like a runaway truck, but I'm swinging back with a vengence! Long story short, it's good to be here. Missed you guys- hope you enjoy this chapter (Even if Ben doesn't)

**Author's Note:**

> When I was first reading these books, being in elementary school, I could sympathize with George and Harold. Like, as a kid on the spectrum, I got it. However, what I DIDN'T get was the portrayal of adults. At the time I was reading these books, the economy was about to tank, 9/11 had happened, we had just entered Iraq again, prices for higher education skyrocketed, the demands of the education field were changing, and a whole bunch of people started to lose their jobs. Everyone was pissed. Everyone was upset. Nobody was calm.  
> Nobody.  
> And I didn't GET how that all connected at the time, but I could see people around me slowly going nuts because there was just SO MUCH- just SO MUCH happening at once. I couldn't help but wonder if maybe George and Harold, being my age, maybe didn't see all those little bits of background and thus just assumed all adults were assholes, or maybe THEY were the assholes, I don't know. All I do know is I remember reading every time Mr. Krupp got angry and thinking, "You know, I don't blame him. I'd be angry too."  
> Aaaand then the movie came out.  
> And well-  
> well-  
> here I am again.  
> Little older and a little more understanding.
> 
> (If you find a mistake in this work, please do not be afraid to let me know. I'm constantly going back and editing this thing anyway. It's all good man <3)


End file.
